Autumn crept up on silent feet whilst i was distracted elsewhere, I turned around and found a landscape beginning to glow with fiery colours. Autumn, with its rich hues & smoky scents, the season I was born into and to which I feel most deeply connected. It is a time for looking back over the disappearing Summer and savouring the memories.
And I have so much to savour from those summer months, such an adventure I had.
Since childhood I had held onto a dream to stay under canvas in an old gypsy vardo.
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This Summer my dream came true and I found myself whisked away down South to spend nights curled up in a deep feathery bed being lulled to sleep by the song of owls hooting in the forest and the gentle rock of a wee house on wheels or reading quietly whilst rain pattering on the old felt roof of a gypsy caravan that had once travelled the roads.
Evenings we spent sat upon the steps of the sweetest Summer house watching a tiny kitten playing amongst the flowers, the heron coming in to land or the deer grazing at the edge of the forest. Quiet times, healing times, memories to cherish.
Our days were spent re-visiting places filled for me with childhood memories, the Cornish lanes & byways of Tavistock, Calstock & Bude. Places I travelled to as a child on long Summery holidays staying with my Grandparents. Days spent with my siblings ploshing in the streams, building dams, hunting for jewelled caddis fly cases or evenings spent exploring the fields for plants & flowers, Grandad teaching us their names & the old country uses. Nights spent listening to old folk songs & stories that fired my childish imagination. Visiting these places was such a lovely, very emotional trip down memory lane.
All to soon it was time to head home, filled with the new experiences & remembering old ones. On our way back we collected my daughter & granddaughter & they came to stay. Three whole weeks for gathering the clan, my three children all home together & at times all four generations of us catching up and getting to know our precious new little addition to the family. Making new memories.
I sit here now on this Autumn tinged evening and see this Summer was filled with childhood hopes & dreams & memories. Where do the years go to I wonder? It seems moments ago I sat and listened to my Grandmother singing, only moments since I sang to my own children and now here I am a Grandmother singing those very same lullabies again.
So another season begins, life moves on and I cherish all the golden edged moments for they have left me with a heart filled with love & a head filled with the memories.
