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One of the advantages of doing these regular author posts on Love Bytes is the ready-made audience for when I’m feeling the need to pontificate. So stand by. I’m in a reflective mood at the moment.
It’s the usual effect of late autumn. The year is dying around us and this is the last gasp of colour before we slide into the monochrome of winter. It’s the catch-your-breath moment, a think back over the year that’s coming to its close, growing anticipation for the holidays to come, and beyond that, a whole new year opening up, all possibility and excitement and promise.
Why such a pensive time? I think it’s because autumn is all about ripening and maturing: harvests, hedges thick with red berries, the ground littered with shiny brown conkers, toadstools, beechnut cases looking like so many young hedgehogs, and leaves of such intense oranges, yellows and reds. It’s like sitting back after a good meal with friends, a glass of something in one hand and sticky sweet dessert in the other, and just basking in the feeling of warm satisfaction and repletion. There’s a sense of something substantial achieved, something worthwhile.
I love autumn. We’ve had a spectacular one in the UK so far. The cool spring, long hot summer, and the Indian summer that was September all contributed to an amazing depth of colour. I’m sure those of you who live in New England and Canada are trying to hide smiles because you lucky beggars get this every year. But for us, autumn’s been more than usually rich and glorious with colour. A sort of enhanced version. Autumn+. Living anywhere near trees has been a delight, and I live near Sherwood forest—yes, that Sherwood forest!—so I’ve been spoiled for beauty this year. Colour exploded everywhere.
The wood in these photos, a remnant of the old Sherwood, is five minutes’ walk from the edge of my village. The leaves are all dropping with a fierce speed now and the trees are increasingly bare-branched with their feet carpeted in red leaves. The air’s crisper and colder—not to mention wetter! This wood’s a favourite place to walk the dogs, and when we get home it’s a dash indoors to get close to the wood-burner and drink mugs of hot chocolate laced with something alcoholic to get the blood moving again.
Autumn’s an inspiring time, too. No, I won’t ever write that Robin Hood/Little John/Will Scarlett ménage story that sometimes whispers in my ear while we’re out walking, but autumn does rejuvenate and de-stress, relaxing tensions and easing some of life’s constrictions. Writing comes easier when we get home—although I confess that may the something alcoholic in the hot chocolate that loosens me up! The WiP seems less eager to fight me, at all events, and sometimes even the characters decide to do what I tell them instead of going their own sweet way and ignoring me. I’m about a third of the way in now on the last of the Lancaster’s Luck series, and I can see where this plot’s leading me. Another reason for that sense of ripe achievement, and one I’m grateful for.
I’m meandering on here. I suspect that this post is just an excuse to photobomb you with pictures of a very ordinary, everyday, nothing-at-all-unusual beauty of an English wood in autumn.
So I hope you enjoyed the photos, if nothing else, and that you’ll share what autumn means to you.
Do you, too, love its mellow perfection or does some other season rock your life? Do tell!
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About Anna
Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.
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