My annual complaint at the Equinox - Mabon, if you are in touch with your Pagan roots - which took place on Monday. Now it will just keep getting darker until the winter solstice, the shortest day, on 21 December.
I know that I write the darker side of romance, and I have a professed ambition to one day write a gothic novel, but I really don't like the dark, short days - and the cold too. I know that celebrating Autumn, or Fall, is a bit of a thing at the moment - harvest festivals, making preserves from excess fruit and vegetable, foraging, drinking pumpkin spice latte, curling up on sofas with cushions and throws and fluffy blankets, watching re-runs of The Gilmore Girls (yes, that is apparently a thing) but it is not me. I'm all for the sunshine and the daylight. If there is such a thing as re-incarnation then coming back as something that hibernates sounds attractive. A bear maybe. Eat as much as you can, then sleep for five months or so. I just looked that up and apparently snails can hibernate for up to three years. Not in my garden they don't - the pesky things are always on the prowl. But who would want to be a snail anyway?
Putting the garden to bed, painting the outdoor furniture, hunting out the fleece bags to wrap my baby olive and bay trees, before it gets really cold are my autumn rituals, and I wouldn't really call them a celebration. One thing I do like is planting bulbs. I'm waiting for the box I have ordered to arrive - I already have some posh new pots to put them in - but that too is looking forward to warmer sunnier days of spring!
I'm just not built for this time of year.
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