Tuesday, 13 October 2009

An Autumn post...


Tilda's sewing

Emmy found an abandoned house sparrow nest in our conifer hedge.

She discovered that the sparrow had used some of her gardening twine as nest materiel.

It was laced with soft moss on the outside and so cosy inside!





Beauty


Jessica the spider...


r
Autumn treasures...


High point of the day was our walk through the park. The sun glinted through the colourful trees as the leaves fluttered down around us like confetti.

We saw a sparrow hawk hover over our garden yesterday.

 Today we found lots of different leaves, seeds, cones and fruits and took them home for identification.

Low point of the day was when afternoon lessons I decided to clean the downstairs part of the house really thoroughly and as it was such a beautiful day set the children loose in the garden.

Five minutes into my well intentioned cleaning plans and Bujana had managed to chase Seraphina into the algae filled puddle of a pond that the cover of our sandpit has become since all the rain last week!


Ode To Autumn

Keats
(1819)

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.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skie
s.