Then summer fades and passes and October comes.
We’ll smell smoke then,
and feel an unexpected sharpness,
a thrill of nervousness,
swift elation,
a sense of sadness and departure.
~ Thomas Wolfe

Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.
~Charles Nodier

I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
~Wendy Delsol

October feels bittersweet, heralding the inevitable slow down to winter stillness.

The garden is put to bed, lawnmowers stored away, horses fluffy with winter fur coats, pruning shears not yet sharpened for the winter work of refinement and shaping.

Yet the air sparkles, sharp-edged in the lungs.

I am never ready for this crush of dark hours descending so quickly. Yet it comes with the promise of light and growth to come.

And so we feast on October while pondering what comes next.