25 years ago
We cleaned up the forest and river by pulling up and chopping down all the alien plants. Very soon the Wild Olives and Wild Peach trees started showing new growth and the indigenous bulbs started flowering. We planted 200 trees, hundreds of shrubs and a few thousand bulbs.
Once we had started there was no turning back. Twenty years later we chopped out all the poplars. Many more tree plantings later there is now a pristine indigenous forest around the river.
…it’s the old gallop,
the horse of old autumn who trembles and endures.
The horse of old autumn has a red beard
and the foam of fear covers his cheeks
and the air that follows him has the form of an ocean
and the smell of vaguer buried rot.
Everyday and ashen color descends from the sky
which the doves must spread over the earth:
the rope woven by oblivion and tears,
time, which has slept long years inside the bells,
everything,
the old suits all bitten, the women who see the snow
coming,
the black poppies that no one can contemplate without
dying,
everything falls to these hands I raise up
in the midst of rain…
Autumn Returns
Pablo Neruda
Easter has come and gone. Officially it is now autumn, late autumn. It is time to put away those summer dresses and sandals and hats and bring out the jerseys and coats and galoshes. Time to find the favourite recipes for soups and stews, to call the chimney sweep and make sure there is enough wood stockpiled for the coming cold.
And while we’re indulging in these small, but precious rituals, let us spare a thought for those less fortunate who face the coming winter with trepidation. Those who do not have the coats or blankets to unpack and only the four walls of a tin shack between them and the winter storms – “…the foam of fear covers his cheeks /and the air that follows him has the form of an ocean / and the smell of vaguer buried rot…”
But for this, autumn is a beautiful time. In the Boland the skies are crystal clear and the air becomes crisp with misty mornings and the reprieve of cool evenings and nights after the dusty summer heat. The winery is calm and brooding – holding only promise and beauty and the vineyards slowly, very slowly turn to gold.
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, willful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
Hurrahing in The Harvest
Gerald Manley Hopkins
The world over, our way of eating and being together changes with every season. The long balmy days and nights draw us outside for picnics and beach days soaking up the sun and cool ocean water. But with the arrival of autumn our needs change instinctively to cosiness and quiet.
Now all the fruits and flowers of summer have been picked and stored to nourish us through winter. The olives have been pressed to oil or pickled or lying in salt and rosemary to dry. It is time for mushroom hunting, for baked pumpkin and stewed pears and quinces. For bright citrus filled with all the goodness of summer.
Autumn is a blissful time. It is a time of letting go and preparing to, as it were, settle down to hibernate to replenish and take stock. To build the strength to, when spring comes, put out shoots and leaves and start again. Now is the time to gather the books and stories and music for long evenings by the fire side. To dust the old photo albums for sitting round the table after dinner to laugh and reminisce.
The acorns have now fallen, but the oaks are always last to lose their leaves and when they do they shed in torrents of brown and gold. They block the pipes and drains. They float on every pond and pool and blow into all the nooks and crannies, doorways and on window sills – relentlessly as if they have only one purpose – to cover the earth with this, their magical blanket, to protect roots and shoots against the cold and supply bedding for squirrels and birds. Then when the rains come those innumerable leaves will break down and replenish the earth with all the nutrients gathered in summer. Suddenly they’ll be gone – one with the soil.
In the cellar the wine has now been tucked up into wooden barrels – slowly maturing and blending all the wonderful flavours and aromas gathered from the sun and the soil in those magical small dark crimson berries – becoming something other, bigger than it was.
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use,
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?
Robert Frost
Gathering Leaves
Autumn on Kleinood is, thus, still a busy month. But it is a different kind of busy. It is not busy in the same way as busy in summer, or during the harvest or spring. It is a time of preparation for sowing, and gathering and tidying up and fixing and to batten down the hatches. For starting to keep an eye on the weather for cold spells and possible rain. Wondering whether it will be a wet or dry winter and planning for both. It is definitely a time for a sigh of relief, laughing about what went wrong and a pat on the back for what went right.
Ii is a time for remembering, for being sad sometimes, for being ever thankful for what we have and, mostly, a time for loving.
om jou te soen laat my dink
aan wingerde maer in die deur-
weekte winters
groen soos die maan in die somer en
in die herfs
die barnsteen en die blou
en die ritselende reën
van
vallende
blare
die barnsteen en die blou
wanneer die aarde ruik en ek jou
(soen)
waarlik jy bêre die 4 seisoene in jou kieste
Breyten Breytenbach
Seisoenegids
