Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells

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However, to recordclimate data, it is important to have set dates that can be compared, so meteorological autumnalways begins on 1 September. 2. Trees prepare for winter As sister palettes, Soft Autumn and Dark Autumn both share True Autumn’s aspects of muted and warm, respectively. Depending on where you fall on the True Autumn spectrum, you can borrow some colours from your sister palettes since they are close enough to the True Autumn colour palette. I’ve also written about what to do in our home county of Devon this Autumn if you are visiting the area.

Compared to Soft Summer, the colours are warmer but otherwise similar – both are medium in value and muted. Summer’s effect on Soft Autumn is to cool the colours slightly and make them softer. Iyer seems to suggest that Japanese culture helps the people navigate these inevitable seasons better than most. At a local park, Iyer hears schoolkids chanting a well-known Japanese song, a lesson that gives its children a heads-up on the blurred lines between life and death, beauty and decay, the subject he ruminates on throughout this genuine and loving tale: “Bright though they are in color, blossoms fall. Which of us escapes the world of change? We cross the farthest limits of our destiny, and let foolish dreams and illusions all be gone.” A mix of prose and haiku, The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton is slippery to classify (the Japanese call it haibun, but we have no such genre), and Autumn Light is similarly ambiguous. Meandering like a river, it flows along with a steady pace of rumination, only to abruptly plunge off a profound waterfall. At other times, it stagnates in an eddy of banality, treading water, barely flowing at all — as in the many sections when Iyer plays ping-pong with elderly acquaintances at the local health club. It is a mysteriously affecting book, but some readers might be frustrated by its swirling structure. Even Iyer’s Japanese wife Hiroko feels perplexed by it. “Your book, nothing happening?” she asks, and she’s kind of right. John Keats' 1820 ode to the fall season is one of the great classics of the poetic movement of Romanticism. The poem is a rich description of the beautyof autumn that focuses on both its lush and sensual fruitfulness and the melancholy hint of shorter days. Keats ends his poem evoking the closing of the season and finding a parallel in the beauty of an early-evening sunset. His words depict the haunting beauty in the quiet winding down into winter. He does, however, spend a lot of time telling readers how good they are to their parents. He even mentioned the number of cruises he has taken his mom on.

Where to plant

It’s within these games that we see best how aging — especially in a country where the population skews so strongly in the plus-65 category that “more diapers are sold to the elderly (in Japan) than to babies,” Iyer notes — is a rhythmic daily battle of impermanence. Each player offers a unique navigation through these comes-to-all autumn years; and how clever of Iyer to make their commotions a metaphor for how the world paddles forward. If you are interested in planning further ahead take a look at my post about Christmas events happening in the UK this year and the best places to find egg hunts and Easter trails in England and Wales.

Very late, so needs a warm position to produce its fully petalled dusky, orange-red flowers with bronze overtones. Extremely hardy though. Up to 90 cm/3ft.

When to divide

During winter there is not enough light for photosynthesis to occur, so as the days shorten throughout autumn, the trees begin to close down their food production systems and reduce the amount of chlorophyll in their leaves. 3. The chemistry of colour In this book, Pico Iyer finds himself undertaking such a walk, under the light-heavy shadows of autumn. A study in the Journal of Aging Research found that babies born during the autumn months are more likely to live to 100 than those born during the rest of the year. Plant in October without fear, unless you have heavy clay. If so, keep your pots in a dry position, fleece in winter and plant in spring. Where to plant