Welcoming Autumn

I am completely smitten with this time of year, when the days are warm and the nights are crisp, and the pumpkins are waiting in the tall grass to be discovered; their bright orange faces are so cheery as they meet you on your way to morning chores.  I love when the wildflowers bloom in the final hurrah of the growing season and grace the roadside ditches with their hues, 

parading to meet autumn.

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

to swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With kernel sweet; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."

~~John Keats