Autumn

It's odd that there is no set day for harvest festival or 'harvest home'. Different communities celebrate on different days, sometimes centred around a Christian church service and sometimes not. It still carries echoes of pre-Christian festivals and sacrificial rites. I've seen at least three different pagan/Celtic festivals - Lammas/Lughnassdh (1 Aug), Mabon (21 Sep) and Samhain (31 Oct-1 Nov) - defined as 'harvest festivals'. At first site that seems greedy, but maybe it's realistic - there is more than one harvest 

Perhaps the difficulty of pinning it down explains why it has escaped the commercialisation of Father Christmas and Easter Eggs. The Christian festival of Michaelmas (29 Sep) would be the obvious candidate for it to centre on: a 'quarter day', of great significance in the agricultural calendar, not to mention the law, education and financial dealings. But even churches don't usually combine the 'Feast of St Michael and All Angels' with a harvest festival. And perhaps its very lack of exploitation, combined with a certain awe for 'harvest' in the farming community of my childhood, explains why I find it more moving than any of them

We picked damsons ('Shropshire Prune' - a 17th century variety) and apples (Epicure - a tyro from 1909; and Pitmaston Russet Nonpareil - 1814). The quantity of fruit on the trees is overwhelming. We can only use or give away a tiny proportion, especially in this year of plenty, when everyone has a surplus. I have not lost that sense of awe

The air is hot and heavy; it is unnerving. You can feel the excess energy in the atmosphere. Storms are forecast. A necessary release

I pocketed these on a walk a couple of days ago but they emerged today. They felt symbolic of autumn on its first day, along with the harvest and the squirrel that I snapped burying an acorn on the lawn at breakfast time. 'Conkers' was an autumn playground game when harvest was done and the 'autumn' school term had begun (I didn't learn to call it 'Michaelmas Term' until much later). Sharp-eyed MrsM found the feather among the first fallen leaves on a woodland floor - I think we were both a little awestruck by that too. I now know it is from a Eurasian jay - another autumn burier of acorns

If they look a little like an offering, that's fine