Quotes: Fall (Autumn)

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

Fall (Autumn)
Fall 306 "Fallen leaves…the gutters and roadsides are, for a little while, almost as brilliant as were the trees themselves." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year.

Fall 306 "The leaves…the expandable leaves, the reds and yellows and russets and purples that have no meaning to the trees themselves." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year.

Fall 162 "In October they are briefly golden before the brittle leaves skip and rustle down the country roads." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 245 "Harvests are reaped, farms are snugged, fireplace smoke scents the evenings." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 248 "…the Harvest Moon is not a hasty moon…comes early and stays late…was a time when the Harvest Moon gave the busy farmer the equivalent of an extra day or two…could return to the fields after supper and evening milking and continue his harvest by moonlight…when corn was cut by hand and husked by hand, when shocks tepeed the fields…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 250 September. "Hickories, still bountiful with ripening nuts, look almost as tired as the elms; their leaves droop and seem to be rusting out like old tin cans." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 251 September. "Some talk of Indian summer and some merely say it’s a good time to be alive." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 256 "You may hear it [loss of energy] in the evening, in the slow tempo of the stridulant ones, the katydids and the crickets that were so insistent only a few weeks ago." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 256 "…the grasshopper has no hop in him till almost noon." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 256 "But the cold-blooded children of summer, the insect hordes, have had their day in the sun." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 257 "The urgency of growth is ended for another year, but life itself is hoarded, in root and bulb and seed and egg." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 258 September. "One wonders why the legend-makers never gave [sumac] credit for lighting the autumn flame in the forest." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 259 "Autumn needs no clock or calendar." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 265 September. "It is the maples that make the spectacular flame of color that comes swooping down through the northeastern woodland." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 265 September. "The sumacs are early color, embers that ignite the big blaze." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 266 September. "And the color laps up the hillsides to the sugar maples and they turn scarlet and orange and gold, so golden that they seem to radiate their own sunlight." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 272 October. "And often the sugar maple’s leaves turn golden yellow, sun-yellow, so that even on a clouded day in October one seems to walk in sunshine in a sugar maple grove." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 273 October. "Maple seeds go whirling away on single-bladed helicopters." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 277 October. "If technology, with its practical laws of efficiency, were in charge of everything we would have to dispense with the autumn color in our woodlands…it isn’t needed for the trees’ health, growth, or fruitfulness…in technical terms, the color is waste, sheer excess and leftover…created…when the tiring tree seals off the sap circulation and no longer replenishes the chlorophyll in the leaves." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 280 October. "…penciled flight of departing geese scrawled against the sky." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 282 "…the look and smell and sound of the autumn woodland." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 282 October. "Dogwood berries…in lacquer-red clusters, bright as holly at Christmas." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 285 October. "Indian summer. There is agreement, however, that the season is characterized by clear, calm, mild days, a hazy horizon, and clear, chill nights." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 287 "The sky is clean, clear, and the sun itself is benevolent, the autumn sun making an autumn day a special moment in time." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 288 "…nostalgic people sniff the evening air and remember forgotten autumns when leaf smoke was the incense of October evenings." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 288 "If you are middle-aged, don’t allow yourself to smell [leaf smoke] or you will wonder what happened to those years." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 291 "…the starlit immensity of the autumn night." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 294 October. "…the color comes swirling down from the tree tops." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 294 October. "Day before yesterday the rising sun lit a vast bonfire in the maples, and at noon the light beneath them was…golden…it rained…the maples stand half naked against the clearing sky and the incredible wealth of beaten gold is on the ground beneath them." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 294 October. "On the ground the fallen leaves are restless, skittering at the roadsides, drifting into the fence corners…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fall 294 October. "Now the jays take over, the jays and the crows." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year