I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
-"theme in yellow" -carl sandburg 1878-1967
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image credit: google images (vintage)
‘now autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods
and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.’
-william allingham
—
tonight will be my visit to the last ann arbor park
one day before my goal of halloween
it will be bittersweet to end this adventure
watch for my story this weekend.
“harvest moon: around the pond i wander and the night is gone.”
-matsuo basho
—
art credit: ‘harvest moon’ – painting by nancy bush
autumn is my time.
i am most radiant and full of energy
when the leaves are falling
and
there is a ghost of change in the air.
-author unknown
—
still walking
as october begins
and
the parks and i
change with the season.
(now at 120 and 30-some to go)
—
north lilley park, ann arbor, mi, usa
fall is only ‘fall’ to americans, even though the term was coined in britain.
what do you call the picking of ripe sweet potatoes, apples, squash and pumpkins?
harvest.
that was the word used until the 1300s to describe the next few months of weather.
because “harvest” also meant the gathering of ripe crops, when the word “autumn” showed up in english writing, its popularity soared.
some time after, poets coined the phrase “the fall of leaves” — shortened to “fall” in the 1600s.
the word “autumn” still remained popular throughout england’s period of colonizing the world.
the lack of consistent communication between the english and the people in the american colonies led to differences in the language.
by the mid-1800s, the word “fall” had firmly rooted itself in america.
—
and apparently something was again lost in translation
when communicating with mother nature
as yesterday was the official first day of
fall/harvest/autumn
and our temps in michigan were in the 90s.
(photo: fuller park, ann arbor, mi, usa)
—
credit: cnn news
an autumn afternoon in ann arbor on the huron river
—
“slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.”
~john de paola
the kinders and their fall collection.
with fall comes the ultimate scourge of lawn work: raking leaves. all of those gorgeous, oxygen-giving trees in your backyard become instruments of torture, littering their leafy bounty all over the lawn and sidewalk.
according to the inventor of the the leaf pants, the leaves aren’t the problem. it’s the rake – that pronged nightmare that strains backs, blisters hands, and poses a real threat if left lying in the grass. but a leaf-blower isn’t the answer either. instead, the inventor insists, what humanity needs is a method that is “compatible with the natural body movement of a person.”
enter the ‘leaf chaps’, a pair of zip-on, flexible tubes that slip over pant legs with a net fastened between the two so you can gather leaves as you stroll. the net corrals the leaves and collects them in front of you, so with just a few extra steps, you’re forming piles that are easily picked up later.
not merely convenient, the chaps also promise to make you more productive. rather than struggle with bulky tools, do something you’d be doing anyway (walking around your lawn), while getting work done! sure, that walk is more like a waddle, but that’s the price you pay for innovation.
—
“if you’re not prepared to be wrong,
you’ll never come up with anything original.”
– sir ken robinson
—
credits: mental floss magazine
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credit: wordporn
