Fall blew into the Shenandoah Valley last night with a big temperature drop and some much-needed rain. For most of the summer the wind is silent, but it’s really talking now, whistling around the old red barn and rattling the house.  The swifts still swoop over our pond in vigorous pursuit of insects and we’ll have many summery days yet before autumn settles in for good, but the season is a changing which inspires me to post some lovely autumnal pics with some of my favorite quotes.

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

No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
~John Donne
Elegy IX–The Autumnal.

Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile.
~William Cullen Bryant

“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.

(***Pic of the Alleghenies taken by my mother)

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
~Stanley Horowitz

Autumn’s the mellow time.
~William Allingham

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.~Albert Camus

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 burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
~Faith Baldwin

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.
~Emily Dickinson
Nature XXVII, Autumn.

Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
~Emily Bronte

And from one of my favorite authors:

“It was one of those autumn days, crisp and clear, when the sky has a pellucid quality which is rarely seen in other seasons.  The hedge maple had turned a brilliant yellow and the beech trees above the hedges were a deeper gold. A few hardy summer wild flowers such as knapweed, yarrow, and cranesbill still starred the verges and banks, brave survivors of summer heat and the ferocity of the recent storms.”  ~Miss Read,Changes at Fairacre

‘In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.‘  ~ Albert Camus.

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ ~ by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(This is a lovely quote but I have to answer ‘yes.’  Looks like a long winter this year.)

‘Like the seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.’ ~ Kahlil Gibran


‘There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of Cathedral tunes.’ ~ Emily Dickinson

‘Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.’~ Ralph Waldo Emerson




“Brew me a cup for a winter’s night.  For the wind howls loud and the furies fight; Spice it with love and stir it with care,And I’ll toast our bright eyes, my sweetheart fair.” ~ Minna Thomas Antrim

‘There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.’  ~Bernard-Paul Heroux

‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.’  ~C.S. Lewis

‘It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.’ ~ Boris Pasternak


“January is the quietest month in the garden…But just because it looks quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.  The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall while microorganisms convert tilled-under fodder into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants.  The feasting earthworms tunnel along, aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome the seeds and bare roots to come.” ~  Rosalie Muller Wrigh

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.

“So it is.”
“And freezing.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”
~ Eeyore

The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
On snowing. And nobody knows (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
Are growing.

Winnie the Pooh
The House at Pooh Corner