Nooooo!! – not Christmas decorations already! Not when Autumn’s blazing away outside with its own decorations. Let’s
not miss out on those because gaudy tinsel is taking over far too soon.
I know the weather’s a bit challenging but there’s still a lot to see, just keep your hood up!
There are bright little hawthorn leaves as red as the berries. Rosy hips all glossy with wet (I don’t mean mine!) and even the odd little apple. There’s an abundance of nuts to collect and baubles of berries the birds have missed still enriching the parklands. And sentinel seed and reed heads in rough patches which, when you look up close, are strung with filigree webs and bunting of wetlets.
Where I live there’s the first murmurings of wild geese as skeins of them arrive to winter here. They are looped along the horizon decorating the sky like drifting paper chains. But other places, even cities, have murmurations of starlings making far better entertainment than anything on a screen. Maybe there’s one near you. (Look here)
Let’s enjoy these Autumnal decorations a whole lot longer before considering those glittery ones big businesses are trying to con us into believing we need to start buying now to spread the cost.
I won’t be hoodwinked whatever the season.
For there is the view that if the cost requires spreading we perhaps should consider whether it’s a cost that’s essential at all. Or whether there are more ecologically sound and fulfilling ways of creating a decorated home and a festive bounteous time to come in December.
And get out and about in Autumn first and learn how she does it!
Ross Mountney's Notebook 