Autumn: A second spring

ALREADY you can feel a touch of autumn in the air — a crispness in the mornings and a shortness in the evenings. There is a tall larch tree on the land that needs to be felled. It has outgrown its situation and its destiny is to provide logs for winter fires. But, seeing as it’s close to the vegetable patch, I’ll wait until most of the vegetables have been harvested before I cut it down.

Yesterday I went out to look at the tree. High in its crown, the first of the needles are starting to go yellow. Soon they will drop. Autumn is definitely coming.

Autumn is my favourite season of the year, though any season has to be better than the summer of 2007. Actually some gardeners call autumn the second spring, and there is truth in this.