The trees are starting to glow

Autumn is starting properly now, the leaves on the trees are starting to turn all kinds of colours and dropping to the ground with the conkers and acorns.  On a beautiful autumn day like today the leaves look like they are glowing against the blue sky.

 

I don't think any photographs can do this time of year justice, let alone my quick snaps but I can't stop taking pictures when the light is this beautiful.  Autumn feels like nature's last hurrah, a burst of brilliance and beauty before the majority of trees and plants die down for winter.

 

I love walking through the leaves in Autumn, and am often the only person in the park picking up the conkers as the children walk past wondering what on earth I am doing.

I have a small collection of conkers on my desk at work - they remind me of things that make me very happy, being on a walk on an autumn day in the fresh air, being in our garden and listening to the birds chattering in the trees.

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves

I came across this poem whilst I should have been working.  Its by Laurence Binyon and was written in 1942:

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves,
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost.
Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before,
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind.
That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.
They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.