Autumn: possibly my favourite season. This year, I have been fighting it a bit, wanting the relaxed warmth of summer to last just a little bit longer. But now, I am ready to accept that it is autumn, and I am feeling ‘autumnal’.
The change for me is triggered by the lower angle of the sun. No matter where I am, it is the change in solar angle I notice almost subconsciously. The quality of light alerts me to the procession of the seasons—like a plant I suppose—triggered by light levels and intensity. My body accepts the change and and my brain follows along; I have no choice.
That said, I am still barely embracing what I enjoy about autumn, without throwing myself fully into it yet. Just dipping my toes, whilst observing a few of the good things: the leaf colours changing in the trees, the abundance of spiders and spider webs around the garden (and the house too), the different vegetables showing up in my veg box and in featured recipes I come across online. Each day it gets a little bit easier to accept and to warm into enjoyment.
I bought my first winter squash, a beautiful blue one called crown prince that I couldn’t resist. I’m thinking about more candles in the house, but haven’t actually put them out yet. And I pulled out my meagre autumnal decorations: a few dried corn stalks, a couple of my kids halloween artworks now decades old, and a couple of strands of jack o’lantern garlands.
One new bonus of autumn is that once the leaves on the neighbours tree fall off, from my office I can glimpse the white cliffs of Culver Down and if there is any sunlight, they gleam a brilliant white.
We have our first inside house project for the autumn underway, plus we are finishing a round of several gardening weekends not only at our house, but also Pete’s mum’s house and also his sister’s home. As his sister is focused on all the myriad inside decisions needed when rebuilding a derelict house, Pete and I have focused on trimming the long abandoned back garden to see what treasures we can find buried there. It is a cacophony of overgrown and enormous old plants, with some real gems tucked away, including a rather deep small pond.
I managed to collect an entire colander of rose hips from some of the old rose bushes and now I get to figure out what to do with those. Any suggestions?
In our garden, I cut back the buddleia early. The branches shot up 12 feet whilst we were away in August and draped over everything including our neighbours garden. As much as I loved the butterflies it attracted earlier this year, all the plants below and behind it suffered from the shade it threw over everything.
I repotted the lavender plants that became anaemic in the shade of the buddleia and have now put them in a place were there is unobstructed sun, at least on the days we have sun. If they make it through the winter, they might go where the tomatoes are finishing up providing their last few lovely fruits.
This is the challenging part of moving to a new garden: learning from month to month where the sun is, what grows when and what it shades. We are playing Tetris with our new plants until we figure out a good year-round resting place for each one.
And there is weeding! We were left a broad acreage (it feels like) of gravelled areas, and the weeds sprout through the plastic under-sheeting like it was fertiliser. It almost makes me want to use chemical spray, but I won’t. I hear salt spray can be effective?
Also, my neighbour says to put lemon or citrus spray around to keep the neighbourhood cats from pooping in my planted beds. (I’d rather just borrow their dog to chase them away.) I enjoy cats individually, at their homes, but I am not a fan when they are yowling in heat, fighting on our shed roofs, and of course sh**ing in my garden.
As you can see, my world these days has shrunk to the size of this very small Island. During the week, I move between two to three houses, with a random trip to one of the bigger villages. My outing yesterday into the big town centre on the Island was an ‘exciting’ mix of shopping for interior wall paint, picking up things for Pete’s mum, and restocking my own drugstore/chemist needs.
Even though this was a purely task-based shopping trip, I always enjoy going to a specialist shop: the kind of place where they focus on a limited product range and the people who work there are deeply knowledgeable about that subject. They also tend to have interesting and quirky personalities.
Rather than go to the big box orange store (B&Q here in the UK; Home Depot in the US), we looked for and found a specialist paint store here on the Island. This shop carries all the various brands of paints: interior and exterior, masonry and wood seal, and stock fancy designer brands as well as the workaday basic paints. Plus all the things you might ever need for doing the painting.
Having gone to this Island paint shop twice, had great service and learned new facts both times, I realise this experience is enhanced because I am meeting people who love what they do. Or are at least extremely well-qualified to do what they do.
I was reminded of a man I met once who was a sales representative for a stationery products company. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of his products, and was a particular wizard with sticky notes. He not only spoke with relish about the uses and benefits of sticky notes, he demonstrated a range of tricks that lured me into his world of sticky note wonder. I came away realising that I had been in the presence of someone who had found his calling. It was thrilling.
Another time Pete told me he had just met a similar expert in his craft who was a car brake fitter. Knew absolutely EVERYTHING about car brakes and had apparently mesmerised Pete with his care and knowledge. No matter how narrow in scope or grand the topic, personal expertise combined with passion, particularly in a trade, is slightly magical for those of us who are less practically-minded. When I meet these experts, their enthusiasm rubs off and almost makes me believe I should change my own career to join them, their passion is so contagious and inspiring.
However, I’m absolutely not that single-minded person. I am still a wide-ranging geographer who gets attracted to shiny new ideas just a bit off to the side and slightly connected to what I was thinking a minute ago. I do that as easily as I get sucked into a love of sticky notes, and gardening and where exactly did this post begin? You see my point?
For those of you who are new, there is a more detailed explanation of my geographic distractibility here:
Such is my current state of mind in our little island world. I am, once again, not quite settled into where I am and what time of year it is; easily distracted by the slightest ripple in my attention. Hopefully further time spent in the garden will provide a needed connection to our season and the rhythms of our place, settling into where we are in the year. Getting off the small island will help with perspective, to think more broadly, providing exposure to inspiring, seemingly unrelated connections. That is the part of current day-to-day that is a bit out of balance, and will hopefully be addressed soon.
In the meantime, thank you so much for reading this far! Please let me know what helps YOU embrace the season you are in, and even perhaps enjoy where you are. I am always eager to learn more from y’all!
Also, I’d love more ideas for :
Rose hip recipes!
Keeping cats from your garden
Is salt spray effective? What do you use for weeds?
What do you do to celebrate and embrace autumn?
Until next week,
xx Sabrina
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This is like meeting for coffee and chatting about home issues, isn't it?
Spray for animals? I use a thing called SCAT (I think its mostly citronella but so strong it cauterises one's nose) and spray it on my garden to keep the rabbits away. It also keeps cats and blackbirds away but has no effect at all on my Jack Russell terrier - not surprising.
Weeds? I actually just get down and weed by hand with rubbish tubs, garden gloves and a trowel. It's a form of mindfulness for me and I really do get close and personal with the soil and my plants.
Rosehips? I can only think of two things - jelly and cordial. Both are delicious but I've never made either as I can never find enough hips!
Embracing autumn? Foraging, bringing an autumnal tree branch/es inside. making soups from harvest. Revelling in the colour of the countryside and planning autumn and winter jaunts across our little island. We don't travel in the summer as we have beaches and a boat close by our cottage. I'm a swimmer and there is a flock of three of us - aged women who have been beaching forever and we still want to do it together for as along as we humanly can.
But autumn is also a time for ordering plants from catalogues and planning for the garden, so life's never dull.
Another lovely post. It's timely for me because I'm in Minneapolis where the leaves are turning, the air is brisk, the sky blue, and the days shorter. I was so happy yesterday running along a path above the river admiring the trees, the bridges, and all those others running or walking. The fall air made me so happy. Meanwhile, it's 88 degrees in Madrid. There's something special about autumn and a transition to welcome the winter, my least favorite season. But at least the fall helps me get mentally prepared.
I love your children's artwork and impressed that with all your sorting and tossing that you had the smarts to hold onto those.