I wake this morning, and it is October.

Wild October, with its beautiful russets and transparent greens

the sunflowers, small suns against the laden apple trees

glowing grasses, delicate and sun blown

Mary Cassett 1880

the garden on the hill glowing with intense purples

And down here in town my hundred square feet of transplants that look like nothing more than sticks, thirsty for today's rain that gathers any lingering summer energies and deposits them around the newly planted roots of peony and delphinium and daisies and one lovely potted rose in the centre of it all - the Abraham Darby that was waiting for me at the garden nursery.............

I love October, - I wait in eager anticipation for vivid sunrises, fiery sunsets, scarlet rose hips, misty mornings and that wonderful feeling of quietness, - the hush of autumn as the earth prepares herself for sleep.

"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.

John Keats

Ode to Autumn