Ask A Wench: What do you like best about autumn?

  From Pat: I'm here in Southern California where the only signs of autumn tend to be piles of pumpkins at the grocery store and the dropping of prickly sweetgum balls. And I know down-under is going into spring, but you at least  experience autumn as Anne tells us, if only on the other end of the year. So this month we asked the wenches what their favorite part of autumn is. My favorite part is pumpkin spice!

From Anne:

The poet Keats wrote of autumn as a "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" but where I live there are very few mists at that time. For me Autumn is one of the most beautiful times of the year, with warm sunny days and cool, crispy nights. And sometimes on the cool evening breeze there is a hint of woodsmoke in the air, a harbinger not of bush fires, but of cosy home fires and the winter to come.  

Autumn brings all the benefits of summer without the hot sticky nights, including the last of the summer fruits.  In the city there are enough exotic (non-native) trees to get a show of autumn color — I love watching the changing of the leaves to crimson or gold and the emergence of the bare tracery of branches against the sky. My favorite autumn color comes from my Virginia Creeper which turns the most beautiful crimson.

From Andrea:

I love Autumn! I grew up in Connecticut, and there is a uniquely memorable clarity to the season in New England. The sunlight has just lost the languid softness of summer, its pale, heat-kissed hues sharpen into a deeper honey gold that drizzles and dances over the red and yellow rufflings of the changing leaves. The air turns cooler, crisper, and redolent with the scent of fresh-chopped wood and ripening apples. As a child, my father and I would often go to the local weathered-red apple barn on weekends and pick out slatted baskets filled with rosy Macs and Macouns. In the car ride home, I'd always choose one and bite into firm, fragrant flesh, savoring the sensation of the tart juice exploding against my tongue and dribbling down my chin. Sweet memories. 

I know many people love spring, when the earth stirs to life and suddenly bursts into bloom. But for me, it’s autumn that strikes some inner chord. The bright blaze of glory—a celebration of the moment that one knows will soon fade to brittle browns—seems all the more beautiful for its fleeting splendor. 

From Nicola:

Autumn is my favourite season.  When I think about it I forget the endless grey mornings like the one we have today and the fact that my walking boots leak, and see the idealised picture created by Keats in his poem; the mist wreathed over the fields, the low sun rising and the dew sparkling on the grass. I love being outdoors and find it lifts my spirits and refreshes me. Walking through the autumn woods I love the richness of the colours and the crispness in the air. 
 
Autumn also has a melancholy edge to it and that calls to something in me too. My other favourite poem about the season is a song by Genesis, “Evidence of Autumn.” It’s such a sad song but in both the words and music it perfectly captures the elegiac nature of a season that is so beautiful and yet has a sorrowful note to it. But it’s not all gloom and doom. In the evening we light the wood burner and curl up in front of the fire with warming food and drink, and a good book, whilst the huge harvest moon rises in the sky outside.

From Joanna:

Joanna here, thinking about the fall. As is often the case, my mind wanders to food.

Locally, we grow apples. We always have in this part of the country, since Colonial days. All the old farmsteads that they turn into visitors' centers with gnarly docents have one or two apple trees for atmosphere. Not generally the actual historical varieties but I do not make myself the ten-thousandth visitor to point this out.

Monticello's apple trees are 100% authentic though. There is something to be said for scholarship. Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple was the Esopus Spitzenburg. Or the Taliaferro. Or the Albemarle Pippin. Or something else. I will nod in agreement to whatever is said.

The Esopus Spitzenburg is said to be "susceptible to any available apple disease which reminds me rather of a toddler, except talking about toddler diseases.

In any case, here in my hills, in the fall, we sell bushels of apples by the roadside, just about all of them actually grown here. The local Amish used to sell homemade apple cider, unpasteurized, but they have rather been driven out of the business by the health department people. There's still good sweet cider in all the stores. Just not quite as authentic.

I'm fond of a mug of hot spiced cider by the fire. Nothing better on a cold fall day. We also make hard apple cider as one of our mountain industries. I am told hard cider is the new craft beer, but mostly by folks who are trying to sell me some. I feel both traditional and wildly modern when I drink hard cider out of what I persist in seeing as a beer bottle. Gives me a bit of a kick. Like a wise country, I enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

From Mary Jo : 

April may be the cruelest month, but autumn could be called the cruelest season because all the flamboyant beauty is twined with the knowledge that it's so fleeting.  Spring just gets better and better until it slides into summer.  Autumn shows off its grandeur till a growling rainstorm comes through, and all the beauty vanishes overnight.    
 
But until that happens, I love looking out of my garage and seeing colors like this!

 

Pat here again:

What is your favorite part of autumn?

 

 

Comments

[Mary T]

I live in the mid-west where we have all four seasons. I love that, even though winter can sometimes be brutal - summer too, if it get too hot and muggy. But spring and autumn are my favorite times of year.

Autumn has such a sad beauty about it. The beautiful color of leaves before they fall and leave the trees bare for winter. The sound of dry leaves as they blow down the street on a windy day is a beautiful eerie sound that I associate only with autumn.

I also love the anticipation of the coming holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas). I don't put as much work into these holidays as I did in younger days, but I still get excited about them.

[Lillian Marek]

It's cool here today, which I hope means that the heat and humidity have finally departed. They hung around much longer than usual this year, much to my annoyance. What I love about autumn—my favorite season—is the clear, crisp days. I don't mind the coming cold of winter at all, but I suspect this is because I live in the age of central heating and indoor plumbing. I might feel very differently about the seasons if I actually lived in the 18th or 19th century.

[Patricia Franzino]

I love the calmness of autumn coolness before the weather is freezing. It's great to be free of the too hot summer and relax. It's easier to throw on a jacket over anything and not have to think about what I'm wearing underneath.

[Faith Freewoman]

For me it's the quality of light...in spring also, but it's most magical in the fall. Sometimes streets turn to gold in the setting sun, and the angle of the light reveals aspects of everyday things that you just don't see the rest of the year.

[StephanieL]

I love the briskness in the air. The ability to wear hoodies, jeans and boots with a wool hat (my favorite uniform) and the colors. The orange and yellow and red and brown...my favorites all swirling around. I even like the dreary grey mornings, as long as I can sit with a book and a cuppa tucked under a warm throw. Autumn is my favorite. :-)

[Sue McCormick]

I do NOT like midwest summers and winters. They are respectively too hot an too cold with little compensation for older folk.

This leaves me spring and fall. Spring is nice — all scattered seven to fourteen days of it. I have never felt that it happens as a continuous season in the midwest!

This obviously leaves fall as my favorite season — if only by default. APPLES, cider, fall color! All are wonderful! From the writings of others, mid-west fall color isn't as spectacular as is New England's. But it does very well indeed.

Especially if you look across the Missouri river into the hills of the Ozarks, or drive further south into those hills. But Columbia's trees are also full of color.

And I have a child's poem to go with the adult ones already quoted.

I like the fail, the mist and all
I like the hoot-owl's lonely call
…
I like to tend my fire a bit
And sit inside and laugh at it!

[LindaB]

I love fall. Orange, yellow and red leaves, warm, but without the humidity, and the bugs are gone! I especially like pumpkins and gourds. All kinds of pumpkins, but especially the white and orange ones--BIG ones, too. I like gourds with curly necks and lots of different colors. I have to keep everything inside because the varmints will eat them if I leave them outside, so I have gourds all over and the pumpkins in the garage. I keep everything until they rot. I still have a white pumpkin from last year, although all my gourds from last year have dried out.

I toss the decaying pumpkins and gourds outside. Last year, some critter, probably one of the many turkeys that flock to the sunflower seed I feed them, must have deposited a gourd seed in the rose beds. A huge plant grew, and something like thirty gourds. Even more gourds for me to enjoy. The only bad thing about the plant was that it took up half the driveway, and the leaves were so big they shaded the roses. But no gourd plant this year. I suppose I could have planted a few seeds myself, but maybe next year, and not in the rose bed.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Autumn is a popular season! And we seem to share the reasons: the light, the colors, the crunch of leaves, the faint melancholy about how soon it will be over. But also the joy and playfulness of the season. And the pumpkins. *G*

[jeanette dilts]

Autumn - hands down! The quality of the light, the beautiful colors, pumpkins, cider, donuts, donuts and donuts - here in the Midwest cider and donuts can be breakfast, lunch or dinner. Also peanut butter kisses sometimes known as Mary Janes and caramel candy apples. It's sweatshirt weather, my very favorite. Our pumpkins go out around the trees for the deer and squirrels to eat. Threw out my gourds one year on the compost pile and in October as the leaves began to fall, discovered a vine had grown up one of the trees so had beautiful warty gourds in green and yellow hanging from the tree like ornaments. I love to buy autumn decorations but one can only have so many without slipping into tacky so I still buy them but give them to the family now. Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday. All of the delicious food and none of the effort required by the other holidays. LOL

[Sonya Heaney]

Sitting out in the sun this afternoon, with all the spring lilac coming out, autumn seems a little distant here in the other half of the world!

Autumn is a beautiful season, though, with probably our nicest weather. We have a gazillion non-native trees, so we get lots of gorgeous colour even though Australian natives don't change with the season.

However, we don't do the pumpkin thing here, Halloween falls in late spring, and our nature is more kangaroos than romantic forest creatures...

[Janice]

I like the idea of autumn, but autumn now in LA is way different than I recall growing up; the city is a megalopolis now and the microclimate has changed; the crisp autumn mornings with frost on the grass are gone. (So are a lot of the lawns.)

I remember hot chocolate and enormous cinnamon and raisin buns at my high school's snack stand before class on chilly mornings, and walking home scuffing through maple leaves on the sidewalk.

Now I am not so crazy about autumn. The hours of daylight are fewer. I don't mind if sunrise is later but I hate that sunset is early. The change in day length seems to aggravate all my minor aches and pains. I do like that it's colder at night and somehow that makes it easier to sleep.

I like pumpkins too. My local market has a "guess the weight" contest. I'm always wrong. I always undershoot. Who knew a pumpkin could weigh over two hundred pounds? And how did the staff ever get it up on the display table?

[Nicola Cornick]

The way that the seasons differ so much is one of the endlessly fascinating things about them, I think. I love your description of seasons in the mid-west, Mary, and your thoughts on autumn. So descriptive and picturesque that I can visualise it! Thank you!

[Nicola Cornick]

That's such a striking thought, Faith! I love the idea of autumn light revealing hidden things.

[Nicola Cornick]

Well, that is a very good point, Lillian! In one of my books I have a time traveller who looks at everyone in their fleece jackets and waterproof boots and thinks a little bit bitterly that they wouldn't have enjoyed winter so much if they had grown up where and when she did! As I get older and more attached to my home comforts I often think it's a good job I wasn't born in an earlier century and if I ever did get the chance to time travel backwards I'd need a cast iron guarantee of returning to the land of central heating!

[Anne Gracie]

Autumn is my favorite time of year, too, Stephanie. Here it's a golden time. Our winters aren't too cold — it rarely snows where I live, but the summers are hot, so the cool nights of autumn are a welcome respite.

[Anne Gracie]

In Australia we eat the pumpkins — we roast them along with potatoes with the Sunday roast.
And the skins are mostly green. It's only in recent times that the shops stock the big ornage pumkins that we see on US TV -- and I'm not even sure whether they're edible. I love the look of gourds, though I've never grown them. Might plant some this year.

[Anne Gracie]

Autumn brings the nicest weather in Melbourne, too, Sonya. My lilac is in bloom, too, and Spring would have to be my second favorite season.

[Nancy]

Autumn like Spring seems to be a fleeting pleasure. It seems that one day the trees have green leaves and the next they are bare. We have had temperatures in the 80's until this week. There is a poem somewhere with one line that mentions 'October's bright blue weather.' When one has such a day with temperatures just cool enough to require a sweater-- that is my type of day. I welcome the return of cooler weather.

[Mary Jo Putney]

A forklift for the giant pumpkin, Janice? *G*

You're right, autumn in a megalopolis isn't much of an autumn. But people generally do sleep better when nights are cooler. It's fun to burrow into the quilts. Cozy!

[Mary Jo Putney]

'October's bright blue weather.'

What a pretty and appropriate phrase, Nancy. It was October when I first moved to Maryland, and I loved the bright, sunny days, not too warm, and the cool nights. Just like now, in fact.

[Annette Naish]

I love autumn best. Here in Texas, the sunlight takes a different slant and it seems to be lighting for a film, like that one scene in When Harry Met Sally when they are walking through Central Park. We are blessed by temperatures which no longer feel as though we are being boiled alive. Today we will be in the 70's that is really cool for here.

We are not blessed by trees showing their glory. But,we do sometimes have some changing colors later in the year. Right now, everything is green and I can go outside and truly enjoy the feeling of autumn.

That is of course if I do not inhale, ragweed is really Big Right Now! And the constant mold in the air is more than normal. Don't even get me started on cedar fever. That is usually in December when male cedar trees send out pollen for all the female cedar trees. The allergens in the air then are enormous.

I see all this and inhale all this and I still love autumn. I think autumn is like a woman who was once breathtakingly beautiful and she realizes things have changed somewhat, so she is going out in a blaze of glory. And what glory it is. Her beauty may be different than it once was, but it is still beautiful enough to take away my breath.

[Karin]

I love the changing leaf colors, although they seem to be coming later and later, maybe because of more summer rain. Now I have to wait till almost November to see the peak colors. I also enjoy driving out in the countryside to visit farm markets for apples, squash, and fall vegetables like kale. The bugs ate my garden kale all summer, but I hope the frost will kill them off and I'll still be able to harvest a crop!

[LindaB]

All pumpkins are edible, but the big orange ones don't taste that good. For eating, you want what they call sugar pumpkins, the medium sized-pumpkins. And you can always roast the seeds.

I wouldn't try eating a gourd. They're too small, hollow and full of seeds.

[Anne Gracie]

Thanks, Linda -- there are many different kinds of pumpkins and they have different names in different countries. Here my faves to eat are Queensland Blues (tough, blue-green skin) that my dad used to grow, and butternut pumpkins (which I think you'd call a squash.) But at any one time in the supermarket there are four or five kinds of pumpkin available. We're big eaters of pumpkin here -- and almost always as a savory vegetable, rather than in something sweet, like pie.

Don't worry, I have no plans to eat a gourd -- my thought to grow them was purely for decoration.

[Anne Gracie]

Linda, here's a pic of the variety of pumpkins we grow here.
https://d2gww82ng2220n.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/variety-of-pumpkins.jpg

[Joanne Bourne]

I love the sound of walking in the woods. So many nuts cracking underfoot. We have acorns, of course. That's most of it. But so many hickory nuts and walnuts.

[Joanne Bourne]

A lot of those we'd call gourds or squashes in the US. (One looks like a delicata squuash. Quite my favorite.

[Janga]

Autumn is my favorite season too, although I think spring is the most beautiful season in my part of the country. We don't get the brilliant colors that New England does, or even the somewhat tamer version that can be found in the northern counties of my state. But one elm golden against a sky so blue it looks like the finger painting of a happy child is enough for me to understand Millay's cry "Lord, I do fear / Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year."

I belong to a football-mad family and live in a football-mad region, so game days and tailgating and school colors and cheers so loud they hurt my ears are all part of fall for me too. So are festivals hosted by every school and church in town and fried apple pies and the sound of pecans hitting the roof and mums in gorgeous pots on the front porch. And then there is the energy. Spring makes me lazy and dreamy, but fall makes me want to do. This week, finally, we are actually having days that don't reach 80 degrees and nights cool enough for a sweater when we go out. Fall came slowly, but it's here now--and I am embracing it.

[LindaB]

Great pic.

I'm sure we have all these, too, but only in the fall.

And, yes, gourds are mainly for decoration.