Approaching Autumn

Autumn Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.  Our rains are slowing right down, harvest time is approaching, the mornings are growing cooler

 Misty early morning.

and the Abdim's storks will soon be flying off to their summer lands.  Each early morning we have a few visitors in the garden...sometimes one..

sometimes two ...

and the other morning even three..

 Pecan nuts maturing. 

 Farm crops growing, growing..

'Pink panther' grass so pink and waving in the breeze, catching the evening sunsets.. also aka 'tigers' by Jediah.

It strikes me how eternally wise Nature is when I see the cyclical change in seasons, subtle here, always there, always to be relied upon, comfort, it is soothing to my soul..thank you God, Spirit for the beautiful rhythm of life and the beauty of our world.

Glimpses of May

 Autumn - maize harvesting and golden leaves..

Long, windy walks

Water lilies

And clear blue skies

June..

We juiced huge amounts of guavas off the trees in our garden.  A dash of ginger and a dash of lemon and into the freezer.

 Bicarbonate and cornflour clay plaques and handprints.

 Lucky beans added to our nature table.

 Papaya fruit trees we have grown from seed.

 And ginger from a bit of ginger root.

We have been using alphabet peg people I made to help two of my boys learn the letters.  The vowels are angels.  These have been such a success! 

 New baby guinea pigs.

 I made three new circular herb gardens.

My crop of chickpeas nearly ready to harvest.

Autumn Season Corner

Our Autumn nature table with Prince Autumn reigning in the centre surrounded by acorns and horse chestnuts and beechnuts, rosehips, hawthorn berries, fungi, crab apples, feathers, leaves and other treasures from nature collected on our autumnal adventures.

I made Prince Autumn by needlefelting his head, arms and body.  His hair and beard are brown/grey Wensleydale locks, I made his gown with felt and I knitted his cloak.

Misty autumn morning

 Beautiful early, misty autumnal mornings.  Sheep doing what sheep do in the field.

 

Chickens out and about in the garden.  All is quiet and peaceful until Dad-Dab the cockerel decides to start crowing to let everyone know it is a beautiful morning!

Spindle wood, ash tree, holly bush

Spindle wood, spindle wood, will you lend me, pray,
A little flaming lantern to light me on my way?
The fairy folk have vanished from the meadow and the glen,
and I would fain go seeking till I find them once again.

Ash tree, ash tree, throw me, if you please,
Throw me down a slender bunch of russet-gold keys;
I fear the gates of fairyland may all be shut fast;
Give me your magic keys that I may get past;
I'll tie them to my girdle, that as I go along
My heart may find a comfort in their tiny tinkling song.

Holly bush, holly bush, help me in my task,
A pocketful of berries is all the alms I ask;
A pocketful of berries to thread in glowing strands
(I would not go a-visiting with nothing in my hands);
So fine will be the rosy chains, so good, so glossy bright,
They'll set the realms of fairyland a-dancing with delight.

R Fyleman - Wynstones 'Autumn'

Park

Collecting conkers. Conker fights. Squirrels.


Harlequin ladybird


Feeding ducks. Moorhens. Dragonflies. Weeping willows.


Daddy long legs. Space. Rolling down slopes.

Our gently flowing days

Our Autumn days are passing quickly yet gently and quietly, mostly spent recuperating from colds which have thankfully passed now but seemed to drag on way too long and slowed us down from our otherwise very active days.

My baby belly is growing beautifully round and our babe is happily kicking about - 18 happy weeks now - the weeks certainly do flash by quickly and I am savouring each day of being pregnant although I find my favourite time to wonder and contemplate about this little babe is mostly in the early hours of the morning or late at night when all is quiet and peaceful. It is such a joy to feel those gentle, early kicks. I have started knitting more baby knits.

Sol and I are immersed in a language arts block. Inspired by Eric Fairman's 'Path of Discovery - Volume One: Grade One" Language Arts container story, I've created our own umbrella story through which to journey through the alphabet and weave together the fairy tales often used for introducing the Waldorf alphabet. This way works well for us, as the story is one I know speaks to and appeals and inspires Sol - lots of nature and wild foods and danger and adventuring and natural magic and wonder and activity and animals. Apart from drawing/painting the letter picture, telling the connected fairy tale, and using our senses to experience the letter, I try to find opportunities for us to 'live' our language journey if possible.

For instance, we covered 'V' for valley and 'H' for hut. In our story, the characters journey through a village in a valley and helped the villagers rebuild damaged houses. Their huts were made in a traditional house building method using sticks woven together and then insulated with a mixture of cow dung and clay - wattling and daubing . I was delighted to find a wonderful nature activities day hosted by forest wardens at a local nature reserve taking place at the same time we covered these letters! Some of the activities we did were wattling and daubing, grinding grain using stones and clay pot making. So, just like our characters in our story who assisted with wattling and daubing in the village in the valley, we wattled and daubed.

Here hazels sticks have been woven together and then covered with a clay mixture. Lots of messy fun - daubing.

For letter 'T' for trees, we used the Grimm's tale, 'Three Little Men in the Forest'. Our story had our characters journey through an ancient forest where they met three wise tree dwellers living in ancient trees who offered wise guidance to our travellers. We spent time learning about ancient trees and then revisited all the large trees on this farm to decide which must be the oldest (we have made friends with most!). Whilst there are no ancient trees here, we admired several of the oaks with hollows and wrinkly, gnarled trunks, but the tree we felt must be the oldest here is one of our favourites - a very large, beautiful beech tree.

Here is a picture of the beech tree taken back in February this year. This is a tree we visit frequently. From what I could discover the oldest recorded ancient tree in our area is a 600 year old sweet chestnut tree. We shall have to pay that tree a visit. (The most incredible trees I personally have loved and touched and admired are the precious, magical baobab trees growing in southern Africa and the beautiful ancient oaks in Nottingham Forest here in England.)

We have also been enjoying daily all that autumn brings in our natural surroundings. Deer bounding over open fields, beautiful, vibrant pheasants in the fields and woods. Lots of beautiful leaves falling, huge flocks of starling gathering and flitting noisily from tree over field to tree. We are living and loving Autumn.

Yew tree berries.

We have admired the berries of the yew tree and the beautiful berries of the spindle tree. The wood was traditionally used for the making of spindles for spinning wool; this use is the origin of the English names of these shrubs. Both yew and spindle berries are highly toxic.

Spindle tree berries. Pink with orange seed centre. Such colour!

So goes our days!

Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes

What a wonderful evening we have had tonight. It rained at first but we kept on undeterred and the rain soon passed. We enjoyed a few dazzling fireworks - how the boys jumped with glee!

Then we lit a fire.

We gathered around that to keep warm and cosy, sausages on sticks, marshmallows too, and parkin cake, and telling stories under the vast, dark sky - quiet all around. Mostly dog and star stories! Our dog enjoyed himself too. We will remember this night with warm memories.

The boys went to sleep with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks.

Remember, remember the fifth of November

"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot."



Tomorrow night is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night in UK. Some four hundred years ago, Guy Fawkes and a group of plotters attempted to blow up the House of Parliament in London with barrels of gunpowder. They planned to kill King James and other leaders. Their attempt failed. Traditionally, it's a night to light bonfires, enjoy firework displays, burn an effigy or Guy, and celebrate that the plot failed.

Whilst we don't burn a Guy on the bonfire, setting off fireworks and having a small bonfire is a fun autumn evening activity and, in fact, fire rituals at this time seem to date back to earlier pagan times.

So we are planning a bonfire, setting off some small child-friendly fireworks, ensuring all animals are safe and happy, and doing some apple-bobbing in a tub of warm water!

We will roast some sausages and later some marshmallows over the fire, make baked potatoes and drink warm ginger milk. We will also make traditional parkin cake, a moist sticky ginger oatmeal cake for Guy Fawkes Night.

Autumn fungi and mushrooms

Here's some of the toadstools, mushrooms, fungi we've discovered on our outdoor adventures.

We've set up a mushroom growing kit so hopefully in a few days we should see some growth and get a crop of mushrooms growing. I'll let you know how we get on.

Halloween fun

Well, we all had such fun at Halloween. We don't do trick or treating and since we live on a farm with so very few houses around here to visit, a little treat treasure hunt suits us just fine. The excitement! Hunting about in the dark for treats under a beautiful full moon with those jack o lanterns glimmering warmly.

By the way, the moon has been so beautiful the past few nights. We have been going to sleep with our curtains open with the moonlight shining on our faces.