Signs That Autumn Is Upon Us

The cold front that brought us one and 70/100's of an inch of rain yesterday along with an overnight low in the upper 40's was also responsible for the mist rising off the pond this morning. (Warmer water temps meeting cooler air.)

And what started as just a small patch of yellow in the bean field across the pond has now turned into the entire field being yellow. That has happened seemingly overnight - although it has probably been a week or so.

I like the play of shadows across the land as the sun lights first the top of the rise and then moves down.

It is appropriate that one hundred ninety-six years ago today John Keats wrote his poem 'To Autumn' which contains these lines:

"Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."

"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

Mine are not swallows but rather Turkey Buzzards. Just as their arrival heralds spring, now they gather in preparation for their Autumnal migration.