Yesterday, in the Abbey Gardens, I saw the men with leaf blowers, and the machine with the leaf blowing attachment, blowing all the leaves into a trail that could be gathered up.
It seems almost like a harvest but there is really no end result – leaves are composted and cannot really be called a harvest. They need clearing away.
When I was young we raked up leaves to burn on the November 5th Bonfire and that marked for me an important turning point of the year.
Morris Men and Maypole dancers welcome in the spring but are absent at this time of year.
Instead we remember Guy Fawkes with fireworks and have Remembrance Day parades. Such ceremonies fit in better with the fallen leaves. The fallen leaves do bring with them a sense of loss.
I so like the road of leaves…yes, that sense of ending and loss – but part of the reason I like the seasons (oh, dreadful inadvertant rhyming!) is the sense of ending and beginning.
I’d gently disagree with the ‘no harvest’ Backstreeter, leaves gathered up and left to the elements for a year or two are great for the garden and allotment, it’s so easy – and they’re free!
I too like this time of year for the sense of loss and ending, and it’s sense of beginning too.
I still haven’t quite forgiven autumn for being forced to learn ode to autumn as a kid – season of mists and mellow fruitfulness etc.
Reminds me of Laurence Bibyon’s poem, “The Burning of the Leaves”:
Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
Sorry to veer off the subject a bit but I guesss my query is about Abbey Gardens and the season.
Can one of you well-informed people tell me what has become of the Cygnets which were to be found in the Mill Stream (?) in the gardens. Six of them seemed to reach adulthood (nearly) but have now disappeared one by one. Do these young swans leave the parents or are they relocated by some organisation?…and does this happen every year about this time? Many thanks.
Well, I don’t recall ever having swept up the leaves in my back garden and the lawn does not seem to have adversely affected? Mind, it may be a lot worse state than, for example, Abbey Gardens. However, we are only talking small Hawthorn and Elderberry leaves, not big Sycamore ones etc.
As a child growing up in Abingdon in the 1960s I remember the scary Guy Fawkes window display in a shop in Stert Street. It was awesome autumnal event not to be missed.