TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF*

Although the only leaf* I can see right now is an aging one, amid lots of others which are just starting to display a blaze of gold, copper and bronze.  I do love autumn and am lucky enough to live in Winchester, where (I'm sure I've mentioned this before) Keats famously wrote his beautiful and evocative poem: Ode To Autumn).

I've been very lazy with this blog - but I'm not alone.  I scan the websites of my fave authors to discover a dearth of info.  Do you think social media has made blogging a redundant pastime?  Yet I love reading brilliant blogs.   Which ones?  Well, The Spike is always worth a look and makes me want to buy up whatever is featured there - clothes/bags/things-I-never-knew-I-wanted-but-can't-live-without.

Have just discovered that my entire back-list is available on iTunes and am KIND OF EXCITED ABOUT THAT!   

So will leave you with a picture of the leaves outside my writing room while I get back to Ariston and Keeley, who are about to get married (she doesn't want to) and the words of that gorgeous poem.  And the question:  to blog, or not to blog? 

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;	10
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day	25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.