mellow fruitfulness

It's pretty - beautiful even, but after so many days of rain one longs for blue - an autumn day spiked with gold.  Still, the trees keep giving according to their natures.  There are chestnuts lying on the ground waiting to be found.  Mr. Signs fills his pockets with them and eats them raw.  I buy mine ready-cooked and vacuum packed, to eat with sweetheart cabbage dressed with olive oil and black pepper.  Even so, it is in the spirit of the season.  When autumn comes, so does the desire for chestnuts and shiny conkers lined along the windowsill. The leaves have not quite turned, but when they do I will gather some to press between the pages of heavy books (I used to have an ancient bible for this but now use old recipe books and a history of Anglo Saxon England which I bought as an English undergraduate but never read, it was expensive so good to feel it is being put to use).  When the leaves are dry I will fix them to the edges of the windowpane with dots of glue. 

When my children were young I made a space for a nature corner, as parents of Steiner school children often do.  In autumn there might be acorns, berries and leaves.  There would also be a knitted gnome or two, crystals and a beeswax candle in a wooden holder.  I might create such a space again this year.  First I must go out and gather something.  When the rain lets up I will.