Geese

Over the last few months, I have been taking and collecting a lot of late summer/ early autumnal photographs, and I mean a lot. 

Each time I upload more photos, I promise myself that I will put together a full photoblog post, but I don't, and the volume of photos makes it an increasingly daunting challenge. Just crown me Queen of Procrastination.

Today, as I opened my computer photos files to upload yet more photos, this photo greeted me. It's not one of those I took today, but it called as loudly as the geese did at the time, so it's earned a post all of its own.

Summer - Autumn - Winter?

I haven't posted here for a while, but I have still been taking photographs, walking and writing. In the meantime we've gone from summer to autumn, back to late summer, onto autumn again, and we might soon be headed for winter, if the weather forecasts are right.

Before the winter chill descends, here are some photographs taken during the summer - autumn shuffle in this eastern corner of Britain.

A Summer Day in Autumn

It's definitely autumn. It's Sunday, 8th October. But, with apologies to Keats, this is no ode to fruitful mists and mellow suns. In fact, with bright sunshine and temperatures in the mid-twenties, if feels like a glorious summer day.

I'm in a light summer skirt, top and sandals. Butterflies are flaunting their gorgeously rich summer colours. Insects are busily out in force and the leaves are barely starting to change colour.

It's more summery than when I last posted here in July.

The horse chestnuts, though, are trying to say something different.

To be honest, though, I'm still not sure whether summer is coming or going.

Walking Woods

Photographs taken in South Cambridgeshire, October 2022.

Poem from the poetry collection Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts (published by Lapwing Publications 2011)

Writing Woods

She is lucid

Like a clear glass bowl of fresh water

In sunlight

When she speaks rivers

 

Chlorophyll flows brightly in her veins

And through her fingertips

Like lit green fuses

As she exhales grass

 

Words drop from her pen

Like the rain’s tears

And a soft wind calms anxious hedgerows

With promises of spring

When she writes woods

 

But now I am just writing

Her writing woods

And you are reading

Me writing her writing

As the trees grow further and further back

And the sky mirror becomes clouded

Because we bind ourselves in words

That stop the leaves from falling

Or growing either

                                                           

                                                                J.S. Watts