St. Luke's Summer Sadness

Today is the Full Hunters Moon & the Feast of St. Luke.

David E. Ross Memorial Garden,
just west of Slayter Hill ~ Purdue
"This is St. Luke's summer, or the 'Indian summer' as it is called in America. The air is soft and warm and still. The yellow leaves fall from the Beeches in countless numbers, but slowly and noiselessly, and as if reluctant to let go their hold. The rooks come back to us again across the fields, and clamour among the empty nests, which were their homes in spring. The 'remontant' Roses are putting out their latest blooms, and the Antirrhinums, Mulleins, and some few other flowers, show themselves 'remontant' also. There is an aromatic fragrance everywhere from the withering leaves and from the lingering flowers.

But there is sadness with it all. We cannot deceive ourselves, but we know that all is now over, and that at any moment the frost may come, and leave us nothing but decay and death."

~ 15 October 1874, emphasis added ~
from A Year in a Lancashire Garden
by Henry A. Bright

"The sadness of autumn is in the air, the smell of woodsmoke and earth and things long-forgotten. Over our heads the first skein of geese (the souls of the dead) scissor through the air, heading for their winter home, north of Boscrambe Woods, the creaking noise they make engenders a fit of melancholy in both of us. The Dog lifts its head, watching them make their black wingprints across the sky and gives a sad little whine. 'Here comes winter,' Audrey says."

~ p 131, emphasis added ~
from the novel Human Croquet
by Kate Atkinson
(see more on my book blog)
The Hunters Moon