Autumn

I love autumn - until I look at my calendar and see days full of work and appointments!

My soul wants to shut out the busyness of September and perhaps it would if I were not able to get out and see the autumn leaves and feel the cool, settling air. There is stillness, decay, and death. But there is also a glimpse of hope - I gather perennial seeds and scatter them in new places hoping for the miracle of spring that will bring them to life.

Many years I have gathered autumn leaves - we all like to "gather" certain things in the hopes, perhaps, of somehow possessing them, or hanging on so we don't lose them.  Well, perhaps by painting these leaves I no longer need to gather.  I feel I am brushing and coaxing many colours and shapes into a memory of autumn.

A few quotes on autumn which cause me to ponder and which hold in them something truly profound about how we might experience this season:

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.
Elizabeth Lawrence

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Robert Browning

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
Yoko Ono