Days

with golden hues

It is a time of fruit, and it is a time of leaves. When I spend time in the garden these two things seem to be what catches my eye. I keep seeing apples and pears that are ripe and ready. The pears frequently fall to the ground only to be eaten by Airedales who seem to devour them in a matter of minutes. Atlas likes to stand and chomp wherever they land while Eos collects hers and sits on the lawn in a specific sport to enjoy them. I’ve watched her delicately stretching up to the pear tree to bump a pear to check if it’s ripe, it drops if it is. While dogs hunt pear, birds hunt berries. I have set up my work from home desk, so I have a view of the garden. I look out on to a wall of green shrubs and bushes that make up the fence line, and easily get distracted watching birds feasting on the small berries that the tree have fruited. Every so often I am disrupted by the familiar clonk of an apple falling off the tree which disrupts the quiet of the day. For a moment the silence in the garden is briefly interrupted before returning its peaceful state.

Across the valley the trees that cover the hill side are starting to turn. I feel grateful for a view from our house that looks across something that is restful. The green of summer, with its little white dots of flowering Manuka/Kanuka that we hungered to see in early summer have long past and now we watch the golden hues of autumn start to creep across the tree line. I find old photos from Covid lock down when this view across the valley meant so much.  At the time it reminded me that there was something more than the four wall of my house. That life and nature were indeed continuing. I learnt photography during this time.  The photos I reflect on are from a project my class and I worked on to keep moral up at the time. We had to capture and collage 4 photos that captured the mood of your day. I thought it is such a good idea and that I should revisit it again, which I have been this (see my stories on Instagram). It feels like a small creative way to pause and reflect on what is going on around me. Busyness seems more prevalent of late. Maybe it is time to reflect and pause a bit more.

It was long overdue, and I suspect a side effect of life busyness but I went for a walk with a dear friend around the local botanical gardens. These walks are much treasured and were the inspiration for my project Refuge - A walk in the Garden (which you can still sign up for here). We debated about whether we should meet up for various reasons but the call of colour, the magical colours of autumn called to us and off we went. The range of shades and tones of the leaves in the local botanical gardens this year seem spectacular. I seem to be seeing shades of lemon and yellow that I have not noticed before. They are such a delight. It is an amazing time of year to be walking in gardens.

We had delightful moment in the garden on Sunday. A golden moment of Autumn. We seem to hit the garden mid afternoon at a precious time where the sun has, if present, warmed enough to in turn warm you. Before sitting with cups of tea and books we finished our disease checks of our bees for the season. It has been a very quiet bee season. We reduced numbers in the hopes that we would start the new season in a new home but as the season draws to a close, we are still here, waiting for that new space to call our own. It did make me understand how much the bees give me and I have very much missed working them over the summer. They create for the most part a busyness that I like. It is the kind of productive work that when it stops creates a noticed absence. It is one of my favourite things to stand in the warmth with a happy hive to work and I am glad I got to feel it on Sunday one last time before the bee season ends. Beekeeping for me is a collection of golden moments in the form of the colour of honey, of wax, of a bee. All echoing the hums and hues of Autumn.