As an environmentalist I feel deeply concerned about what is happening to our climate. It is not right that I should be out in the garden shovelling leaves in shorts and a teeshirt on the last weekend of October in Belgium.

The warm weather has delayed the onset of Autumn for many trees and we have totally lacked the wind and rains that make up a “proper” Autumn, so at some point we are due a huge leaf fall.

But as a human being I just love an Autumn like this because it forces me outside again and again to take in the colours and the abundance of nature here in Wallonia. I stopped my garden clearing for a few minutes this afternoon to take these few pictures because I just had to add them to my collection of blog posts that share the simple tag “Autumn” but cover such an abundance of colour and life.

To accompany them, the poetry of John Keats.

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.

(John Keats. 1795–1821)