Along with all the downsides of advanced age, there is, to be sure, a quality non-existent in the years that precede it. Our garden is glorious in this current season. Maples, Rowans, Acers. The human turns grey, while the trees turn red and orange. And history, meanwhile, turns the page.
@WmJas - Indeed - I visited New Hampshire in the early fall once, and it was wonderful - with the maples set-off by lucid blue skies.
The English autumn tends to be more muted by mists and cloud cover - but when the sun comes-out on the beeches and mixed woodlands, the variety (albeit not the intensity) of colour exceeds New England.
Autumn isn't really old age, at least not for trees and other woody perennials. For them it is only bedtime. The leaves don't just fade and shrivel, as when a tropical annual is bitten by frost: they are following a program, as surely as if they were brushing their teeth and saying their prayers.
27 October 2015 at 22:51
[Image]
Today we went for a walk and picnic in the glorious autumn colours of the beeches etc of Allen Banks, Northumberland - I didn't take the above picture, but this is what it looked like.
Autumn
is really the best of the seasons; and I'm not sure that old age isn't
the best part of life. But of course, like autumn, it doesn't last.
CS Lewis to his oldest friend, Arthur Greaves - written a month before he died.
"Autumn in Northumberland"
5 Comments -
Along with all the downsides of advanced age, there is, to be sure, a quality non-existent in the years that precede it.
Our garden is glorious in this current season. Maples, Rowans, Acers. The human turns grey, while the trees turn red and orange.
And history, meanwhile, turns the page.
25 October 2015 at 20:06
To walk in the woods with all its beauty to behold. I sing and dance inside; my smile is my witness.
26 October 2015 at 23:05
This is one thing I hate about living in a subtropical region with no autumn to speak of. I miss New Hampshire so acutely at this time of year.
27 October 2015 at 04:56
@WmJas - Indeed - I visited New Hampshire in the early fall once, and it was wonderful - with the maples set-off by lucid blue skies.
The English autumn tends to be more muted by mists and cloud cover - but when the sun comes-out on the beeches and mixed woodlands, the variety (albeit not the intensity) of colour exceeds New England.
27 October 2015 at 13:04
Autumn isn't really old age, at least not for trees and other woody perennials. For them it is only bedtime. The leaves don't just fade and shrivel, as when a tropical annual is bitten by frost: they are following a program, as surely as if they were brushing their teeth and saying their prayers.
27 October 2015 at 22:51