the pleasures of autumn

The pleasures of October – a day of sunshine and clear blue skies – a long walk in the countryside with kestrels and buzzards - getting home to make tea and sit in my kitchen with the gladioli that are flourishing in this late summer season –

– and stopping off on the way home to buy home-grown dahlias and tomatoes from a stall outside a village garden –  pumpkin, a marrow and shallots – all for pennies –  fresh and organic – and apples from my own Bramley apple tree –

– after the morning spent bringing in all the pots of geraniums from the garden, for their continued flowering in the conservatory, trimmed and fed and ready to bask in what will become a winter garden in the cold and colourless months until spring comes again –

I am a solitary and that is that. I love people OK, but I belong to solitude.

Thomas Merton