Of all the months of the year, September is my favourite month.
That might be because it is my birthday month. It is also the beginning of autumn, my favourite season. This, according to the poet John Keats, is the ‘Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness.’ I love watching the leaves on the trees change colour from the green of spring and summer to gold and bronze, russet and red.
Cool, crisp mornings can be followed by clear blue skies and balmy sunshine. There may be a spell of Indian Summer, that dry, warm period that can occur after the first frost and before the cooler temperatures of October set in.
Or the mornings might shimmer with a gossamer-light mist draping late-season blackberries on thehedgerows or making spiders' webs glisten. French author Lea Malot says, ‘September was a thirty-days long goodbye to summer,' while Virgin Woolf wrote, ‘All the months are crude experiments out of which the perfect September is made.’ That seems about right to me.
But the weather, like fate, can be fickle. During my
first visit to Canada over thirty years ago, I went out in jeans and a t-shirt on
a beautiful sunny September morning. In the afternoon, the temperature plummeted,
and a blizzard blew in. I had to buy a jacket and boots and found traffic had ground to a halt which necessitated taking shelter for
the night in a hotel. These days I am prepared for any
eventuality.
Now the evenings are beginning to draw in, it's time to cozy up to the fire and start thinking about the next novel.
Victoria Chatham