AUTUMNAL MUSINGS

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
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SEPTEMBER GOLD

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"Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields,

The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth

And you walk under the red light of fall

The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain

The sharp, gentle chill of fall.

Here as we move into the shadows of autumn

The night that brings the morning of spring

Come to us, Lord of Harvest

Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us ..."

"Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine." - Rainer Maria Rilke


September marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical year in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
On the first Sunday of September, the regata storica parade is staged in Venice, as prelude to the rowing contests known as regattas.
In the United States, September 11 is Patriot Day, in remembrance of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
The equinox named the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere and the vernal or spring equinox in the southern hemisphere occurs on dates varying from 21 September to 24 September
Counterintuitively, the German Oktoberfest and the Chinese August Moon festival (more correctly called the Mid-Autumn Festival) both occur in September.
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"The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cutsChrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."-
John Updike, 'September'

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"September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples, and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn."- Robert Lowell

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"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November."- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905





"The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many."- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Spring scarce had greener fields to show than theseOf mid September; through the still warm noonThe rivulets ripple forth a gladder tuneThan ever in the summer; from the treesDusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoonIn pallid skies more suddenly, and the moonFinds motionless white mists out on the leas."- Edward Dowden, In September

"I trust in Nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and Autumn garner to the ends of time."- Robert Browning