Summer slips...

All at once Summer has slipped away and Autumn's arrival is heralded with cool winds, an abundance of fruits heavy in the hedgerows and a yearning for a new colour palette to paint my days...

* image on the left by Sharyn Cairns, styled by Geraldine Munoz

**Image on the right from L O L I T A

Dark and warm

~ caramel, chocolate, antique rose, warm black, blackberry, elderberry, conker, acorn, sage, ripened wheat and a hint of golden yarrow~

I love that my colour palette flowed from food to botanica! Quite unintentional and yet somehow perfect....

 ~And now the roses are tapestry stitched~

~The berries are hips and haws and crabs~

~The posies are transfers on china~

~The jewels that sparkle are early morning meadow treasure~

 Yes! The secret lacing society works silently during the night to thrill the Boodle and I each morning with dew encrusted settings dangling from the limbs of summer brown grasses

Early morning mist settles around the house, there is a hush, the landscape beyond is veiled. Sometimes I feel like a time traveller standing and staring, wondering which century I'm in and who is standing alongside me in another time...

...and I see pattern everywhere...even the tire treads on the tractor leaving their muddy chevron trails.

The logs we have been breaking our backs to move from the woods to the barn will soon be merrily crackling in the woodburner.

The trees in the orchard are glowing with russet baubles. I thank my lucky stars to have been born here in temperate England where the four seasons are quite distinct. I long for the signs we are shifting from one to the next, you can almost smell the change before it happens. I adore seasonal food. This weekend will see me pickling and jamming...the alchemy of it! I suppose I find the rhythm of it soothing, back to repetition and pattern making of another sort I suppose?

~~~

I almost forgot...the title of this post is "Summer slips..." I have been musing over the inference . I love the idea that Autumn is somehow Summers' petticoat, giving body and substance, all ruffles and contrast...

Here's to A u t u m n

Wishing you warmth

--x--