Why I love autumn

Each season has its own charms, but autumn is, I think my favourite of all.​

Autumn Acers at Wisley Garden, Surrey

For me, like many, September is the real beginning of the year – the new exercise book feeling, the surge of energy after the summer break, maybe taking up a new hobby or course and the slight sense of urgency when you realise just how much you simply must get done before Christmas, that shiny brick wall in the continuum of time.

What’s so special to me about autumn is the continual change. The English summer, (June-August) is fairly samey (especially if you’re no longer tied to the school calendar) and January to March don’t offer much in the way of variety (except the gradual widening of the day’s bookends and the emergence of the first few flowers). But from September to December we have a more obvious change in nature, as well as the autumn feasts and festivals which deserve a blog all of their own, but aren’t Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night so exciting? I haven’t experienced them yet, but Diwali, Thanksgiving and the many other autumn festivals from around the world sound fun too. And ultimately, we’re heading towards Christmas, ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ – no wonder so many romance books are set at Christmas.  

Also, there’s the nostalgia. For some reason, autumn is particularly nostalgic for me. As the evenings draw in it reminds me of family teatimes around our little black-and-white TV watching Play Away, Animal Magic with Johnny Morris or the Box of Delights while munching buttery crumpets and toasted English muffins. Or, if we’d just been to the church Christmas Bazaar, a slice of my godmother Joan’s amazing apricot sponge. I expect we ate these kinds of things and watched TV all year when I was growing up but, for some reason, I associate these cosy late afternoons at home with autumn. And crumpets are, I’m sure, only eaten when the afternoons are dark.

The bountiful harvest at Wisley Gardens

Kicking conkers and their spiny shells down the road reminds me of the days when my contemporaries, in the absence of more exciting electronic pursuits, used to scrabble to collect these precious gems, looking for the biggest, toughest one for their conker fights, rather than simply letting them rot by the roadside or be crushed to a mashed-potato consistency by passing cars. Spiky sweet chestnut husks with the occasional miserable little chestnut inside bring back memories of trawling our local park for fat ones my Italian mother could roast, eventually giving up and buying a net bag from the supermarket.

Because I’m a squirrelly sort of person I adore the idea of gathering nuts, even if I’m not ultimately going to eat them. I think of the little creatures, like Little Grey Rabbit, the mice of Brambly Hedge and Frederick’s family of field mice, gathering all their winter supplies and storing them away. My cupboards are full of jam I made this summer, my freezer full of beans, roasted tomatoes, apple puree and other goodies from my allotment. Even though I don’t really eat jam, I just can’t help making it! There’s nothing cosier than a pantry filled with stores put away for the hard winter ahead. What a blessing it is not to have to look at one’s stores worrying that there simply wouldn’t be enough to last through the winter. Nostalgia is one thing, but hooray for Sainsbury’s.

I also love those cheerful flowers that hang on and hang on until the first frosts – rudbeckia, cosmos, roses, nasturtiums all keep going for far longer than you think they should. The bees are fewer and moving slower, but they’re still there, and glad of these last remnants of summer’s bounty.

And then there are the gradually changing colours of the trees. I won’t now open the thesaurus and include here every possible name for ‘yellow’ and ‘brown’ – I respect you and your own imagination too much! Something curious I noticed this year, though, is that whereas normally trees normally turn gradually from green to brown, this year there were a lot which turned brown in clumps – as in, most of the tree will be green but whole branches here and there will have turned completely brown. This seems to be the case particularly for silver birches. Did anyone else notice this?

Now the storms have come there aren’t many leaves left on any of the trees round here and I sigh and accept that it’s winter. And so we’ll go and buy our Christmas trees (yes, plural – I’ll explain that another time) and snuggle down by the fire and dream of summer.

Jack'o'lantern