Our Frosty Autumn Garden in the Shenandoah Valley–Beth Trissel

“Just before the death of flowers,
And before they are buried in snow,
There comes a festival season
When nature is all aglow.”
–   Author Unknown

“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence.”
–   Thomas Hood

“…the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips in the sun.”
–   W. S. Merwin,  The Love of October

“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

“Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;
but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance.  What man can stand with autumn
on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling
hills that reach to the far horizon?
–   Hal Borland

“There ought to be gardens for all months in the year,
in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.”
–  Sir Francis Bacon

“Autumn begins with a subtle change in the light, with skies
a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and
chilled.  The season comes full with the first frost, the
disappearance of migrant birds, and the harvesting of
the season’s last crops.”
–   Glenn Wolff and Jerry Dennis

“Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined
And spreads a common feast for all that live.”
–   James Thomson

“The wind-blown leaves turn
Dancing the golden sunlight
across the tired floor.”
–   Matt Dimmic

***Photographs of our garden by my talented daughter Elise