The leaves are clinging on to the trees for dear life but the wind today has made some of them start to fall. Quite a few are still spring-green though. I've been enjoying the cooler weather too - cooler nights and that nice cool when I step out of the door in the morning.
There were no conkers on the tree at the back of my flats this year - the heat of the summer meant that they didn't mature properly.
Do you know what a conker is?
The fruit of the horse chestnut tree - their prickly shells are in direct opposition to their shiny, smooth surfaces. And each year I collect a few and carry them in coat pockets because I love to feel the smoothness of them. When they first come down they're really shiny and smooth and as they dry out they crinkle and shrivel. But I don't have any this year.I did have an acorn for a while, but it didn't last as well as a conker....
Even though it's rained quite a bit recently there isn't that damp, autumn feel. I wish I could capture that smell and feel to share it with you. The smell of woodland decay - leaves and barks and seeds gently settling for the winter, and yet - the result of that decay will be ready to feed the new growth in the spring. It's sad; I oddly miss cold winters and damp and dreary days - is the world dying? It's changing, that's for sure - in so many ways - I've changed, but it's changing too. I worry about what we're doing to the world - yet here I sit at my computer, consuming electricity and metals and plastics that will kill the world a little bit more. Will the world and I go down together? It's odd - I sit here and sometimes think that it would be better if we had never gone down this path of consumerism, of great technology - the search for new and bigger and better and how and why - that the simple life was better. But, of course, without all of that - or at least some of that - I would have died from cancer and wouldn't be here to think those thoughts.
Odd.
