Coco looking very autumnal
Strange day. 31C outside as I write this, yet it feels very autumnal. The sunrise is getting later, the sunset is getting earlier, and the weather is very changeable as next week is showing highs of only 2/3rds the temperature. Gourds are in the gardens, including a wonderful feast of patty pan squash that I just picked.
Last Saturday was the local Summerland Fall Fair. Apparently, this was the 111th annual event. I think the organizing committee missed the perfect marketing tie-in to Bilbo Baggins' eleventy-first birthday party in The Lord of the Rings, but perhaps they are too busy farming to read such a meaty tome. Our community was founded on orchards and produce, before wine became the big thing that it now is. It was a wonderful event - booths showing off the best of the district, games and activities for the kids, and the bigger kids as well for that matter. And fantastic live music.
A view from the stage
Well, I say it was fantastic as I played djembe in one of the sessions, and my lovely wife also played ukulele in another. Coco and I went to watch her play, which is even more fun than playing myself! Especially as the local cake stall was there and I was happily munching on a far-too-fattening apple fritter. Yummy.
Coco watching the Ukulele group play
But the fall fair is always the turning point. Fall is coming, and the extensive list of time-sensitive projects is piling up with a fast deadline. It can snow as early as the beginning of November here, and once it snows, I may not see my lawn for 5-6 months. How's that for motivation to get things done?
Despite the stress of the tasks to do, I do enjoy autumn. I'm looking forward to cool evenings by a warm fire. And, in thinking of the change in season, I dug out my collection of Keat's to reread his ode "To Autumn". Fantastic, isn't it:
To Autumm:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
lose 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.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.