Autumn Books

The Harvest Moon

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Nature and Wildlife Games

Board games, card games and dice games are played a lot in our house. Winter seems to be when games really come into their own, but they are equally perfect for a quiet summer afternoon when trying to get respite from the heat. Continue reading

Embracing Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were –
The nuts are getting brown –
The berry’s cheek is plumper –
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf –
The field a scarlet gown –
Lest I sh’d be old-fashioned
I’ll put a trinket on.
— Emily Dickinson

No sooner had we returned from our summer holiday, than we felt the autumn chill in the air. The blustery wind has been tossing the crunchy leaves around our garden. It really feels like autumn has arrived, although unlike Dickinson’s description our roses are still blooming. To cherish the turn in the weather, we drew our first ever chalk pastel pictures of ‘An Autumn Walk in the Woods’ with help from  www.chalkpastel.com. We loved using a new medium for our artwork.

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