Walking home across Larkhall Park this afternoon, the grass is parched and only the odd turning leaf betrays the season. I am a bee from the first verse of Keats' poem To Autumn.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close 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.
Note to self: take some autumnal piccies when it properly arrives, don't have any in my library...