As people who have been reading my blog for some time know one of the main things that I love about living here is the way the seasons are defined. The winter with it’s imposing wind, especially by my house on the hill! The frosts so harsh and beautiful at the same time …….

You batten down the hatches and you light the fire mid afternoon, and freeze the rest of the day! And you are grateful. In fact this year we will be even more thankful because thanks to the kindness of others we now have a TV in our bedroom so we can snuggle under the duvet this year (and watch the telly thank you!!)

There is no escaping spring when the crocus come up in my garden, followed by the primrose in every colour imaginable and the hedgerows are a sea of blossom for the copious amount of cob nut trees in this region. My garden likes to show me it is waking up and as always my beautiful old cherry tree never fails to make me smile… she is reminding me every time that things will come around again and it will all be alright as long as you believe and go with the flow. I have had her now nearly twenty years, and she even moved to France with me!

Then on comes summer, with it’s hot days (extremely hot this year our well dried up!) and the meadow flowers all along the banks by the roads and fields; with the vide grenier’s in every town, the swifts teaching their babies to fly and catch the insects in the evening sun, and the bats, who like to pay a visit or two to us. The skies are unbelievably clear, the stars so bright because there is no light pollution here in my wonderful environment in which I live. My clematis show off and compete against each other and I love sitting in the garden until late in the evening until the sun goes down..

 

And finally to autumn. My faithful followers will know just how much this season inspires me. It can be beautiful, and sad, happy but melancholy because we know that we are saying goodbye to another summer; and we perhaps ask, did we enjoy and savor every moment as we should have? There are no promises for the future who knows what it will hold. The season is melancholy because things are dying around you, even our chickens are only laying one egg a day – or perhaps we have hungry pine martens paying us a visit, every thing has to batten down and survive the winter, I always try and remind myself of that. But autumn also has so much to offer, not least an abundance of walnuts which this year I have decided to put them to good use and I am collecting them every day (although my fingers have now been dyed a distinctly unattractive shade of brown!!) I started my collection yesterday and picked up over two hundred …

Today, accompanied by the truffle snuffler that is Wiglet the piglet

I picked up another sixty three with many more to come. I plan to share them with my friends and neighbours and cook the promised coffee and walnut cake!

The cucumber is still giving and I have another three growing, but alas the tomatoes bought it some time ago. My fairy kingdoms have sprung up everywhere, and I still love to imagine them lit up with tiny lights each evening.

We have started to get our logs, and are going to use some of our pine trees as well because nothing can go to waste now, not living out here. In fact my darling husband

(He will kill me for this photo but serves him right for taking it on my Ipad!) has been out sawing the ones we have bought so far.

Yes autumn has come very early, in fact we have had to light our fire for the past week or so, but so what it will all work out in the end, I believe it will.

So I know that Persephone has left with Hades for the underworld, and that the world around me is going to sleep, but I also know to treasure each and every moment. The only moment is now….. As the late great Dr Wayne W Dyer says when explaining the Tao….

“Learn to think in moments, rather than in days, weeks, months, years, decades, or a lifetime. All we ever get is right now – that’s it. So we must avoid the inclination to magnify tiny events or worry about a future that may never arrive. It’s the little things that make all the difference in our world, and keeping life simple replaces chaos.”

So just a big thank you to my husband. I read him the Tao, whether he wants me to or not, and he always patiently listens. I love him for that, I always thought that he was  he humoring me. But then the other day, when I said that I was a bit worried (I know worrying is futile and I do try not to as it gains nothing) about not having enough wood for the winter he said:

“We got through last winter, and the winter before that, and we will get through this one. I am confident of that, things will come our way, and I am not going to worry about something when I know that things will resolve themselves if we let them.”

I could have cried, he wasn’t humoring me, he was taking it all in, in his own way, and then understanding exactly the message, to help me when I lost my way.

Happy autumn folks… enjoy it all this season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

Moisy