The Last Rose of Summer....

"Fall has always been my favorite season.
The time when everything bursts with its last beauty,
as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale."

Lauren DeStefano

  Today is the last day of summer and I thought I'd post an appropriate image...a solitary yet lovely rose.

   It always seems as if there is a final burst of beauty just before the landscape resigns itself to the coming change.  When, at least here in Maine, it prepares itself for the cooling days and frosty nights.

   I too am preparing for my time of inward turnings.  The wood is safely stacked in the barn cellar and I'm alright with letting the garden go for this year.  Like the robins and the swallows, it will be back in the Spring.

   After teaching for so many years, September always seemed like a beginning to me...the beginning of a new school term with all its anticipation and hopeful optimism.  Now it is the winding down time of year for me.

    I leave today for a week in Down East Maine with a group of photographers.  So, instead of writing lesson plans and grading projects,  I will be writing in my journal and photographing the amazing landscape.

    I've had some wonderful travels this year and they aren't over yet. I'm looking forward to seeing the Maine coast dressed in its Autumn colors this coming week and in November I will again travel to St. John in the US Virgin Islands, to where it is always summer.  That will make a very interesting comparison!

   The Fall Equinox is a liminal time, when we leave the sunny, warm days summer and cross over into the cool, crisp days of autumn here in New England.  It is a transformational time and there is a real feeling of the circularity of the the seasons here.  As much as I love visiting the Caribbean, I would never want to leave, for too long, the changing seasons of the Northeast.  My "inner chipmunk" is already storing away things for the coming winter months.  It will be a time to sit with my images of this year and reflect.  But that in-dwelling time is still in the future...now this pilgrim is off on another adventure and I'll share the fruits of that adventure with you all next week!

   Here is another perspective on the transition time of Autumn by Karen Horneffer-Ginter...

Balance and Other Such Fall Intentions