“Plump unpeck’d cherries Melons and raspberries Bloom-down-cheek’s peaches Swat-headed mulberries”
From Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti
What’s happening this month in terms of events? On 23rd this year we have the autumn equinox and harvest festivals held on the nearest Sunday. There’s Michaelmas – the end of blackberries.
The main events foodwise are apples and corn on the cob, and, since it’s the beginning of the shooting season, pheasant. For me it is also the damson harvest, and the first phase of damson gin production.
John Keats – the nineteenth century poet who wrote ‘To Autumn’ – according to MR Ridley “the most serenely flawless poem in our language”
To Autumn
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-eaves 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 cider-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 skies.
