Odd harvest, overgrown grass, and Keats

I have beans to pick later today. More beans. There's a few ripe cherry tomatoes as well, and quite a few green ones. I hope we can eke out enough warm and sunny days to get them across the finish line (and if not, they'll ripen in a brown paper bag inside). 

Usually, I'd be tidying up the garden boxes by now, but this late push due to such a weird summer weather pattern is a challenge. I'm glad to have the veggies, as few as they are, but seriously, I hope next year things are a little more balanced. The lilacs are so confused; they are re-leafing still. And the roses are blooming furiously-- one thing about so much rain, the rose bushes exploded. They are huge. 

As is the grass. Today, our friend who owns a landscaping company is scheduled to come and mow. It's well beyond anything we can do--it's haying, not mowing. I hope he comes, though, as more rain is in the forecast. (No surprise there.)

So here's another of my favorite fall poems. This one is so peaceful, and it's by one of my favorite poets, John Keats. I hope you like it, too. 

Have a good Friday!

C

To Autumn

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John Keats

1795 –

1821

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-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 a sweet kernel; 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.

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;
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 twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-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 barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  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;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Written September 19, 1819; first published in 1820. This poem is in the public domain.