Wednesday 19 November 2008

The Four Seasons.

Vivaldi does it in music - leaving us with a musical picture of each season.
Dominic Rivron (see my blog list) suggested that my window pictures were the equivalent of John Cage's "4 minutes 33 seconds" in which there is silence so that the audience can hear the sounds of the world, so I hope it is not too presumptuous of me to suggest a written account of the four seasons.
Outside most of the leaves have fallen, everywhere is damp and there is a smell of Autumn that you cannot escape from. Each season has it beauties - each its downside.
I thought you might like to read these four word pictures:

Autumn: Crisp leaves lie underfoot; ash keys spiral down; elderberry fruit glows darkly in the hedgerow; meadow grass is thick with gossamer, shining silver in the weak sunlight; the smell of bonfires filters through the senses. There is a smell of decay and dying - yet under the hedge violet leaves are beginning to emerge.

Winter: Bushes are heavy with berries - red haws, orange hips, purple-black sloes;
they shine damply in the morning light. Fieldfares - a thousand - fly in and settle on the branches. By evening the berries are gone and the bushes are bare and black.
A robin sings his shrill song from the topmost bough but the fieldfares have moved on to pastures new.

Spring: A celandine under the hedge; a marsh marigold hiding on the beck side; aconites under the tree in the garden; the first primrose in the wood; a lone daffodil by the side of the lane; pollen on the pussy-willow; hazel catkins shining like lanterns; the sun shining weakly through thin cloud - all yellow - the colour of Spring.

Summer: Hay lies drying in the bottom meadow; a plane drones overhead in the deep blue; bees work the meadow flowers - corn cockle, milkmaids, pimpernel and buttercup; a brown hare watches from the sidelines, his tipped ears alert. The haymakers gather round the blue checked cloth on the warm grass and eat their sandwiches in the warm Summer air.

14 comments:

Tess Kincaid said...

Vivaldi's Four Seasons is wonderful and so are yours. :^)

I enjoyed your book choices, too!

Sal said...

Lovely to have such pictures created in one's mind!
And the words somehow remind me of those old Ladybird books...'What to look for in Autumn' (etc etc).
;-)

Eclipse said...

I do like your word use, and the imagery. Unfortunately living in a town rather than the country, at the moment apart from the leaves - it's not really relating. Although I can really imagine it regardless.

I really like the pictures I'm imagining though!!

Janice Thomson said...

Beautiful Weaver just beautiful descriptions. I have Vivaldi's For Season's too.

Crafty Green Poet said...

beautiful and evocative descriptions.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thanks to all for your comments.

Anonymous said...

I really like your word pictures. I like to do that sometimes but have laid it aside for more words. LOL I do like the four seasons here but we have different words which makes me guess a lot as to what you are talking about.

We have not been permitted, by law, to burn anything, much less leaves in the fall or autumn, as you described. I can't remember the last time we were legally able to burn leaves but it has been three decades or longer. The city comes around every street in town two times each week and sucks up all of the leaves people have raked out to the curbside. I keep all of my leaves and allow them to blow in and under bushes and shrubs as Nature tends to put them there much to the delight of birds who scratch through them all through the winter and in the spring and through the next summer until they disappear. They find a lot of food to eat there.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Glad you liked my book choice willow.

The Weaver of Grass said...

See what you mean about Ladybird books, Sal. The pieces were done as an exercise in our writers group - writing in as few words as possible.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Keep the imagination working Eclipse!

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thanks for the comment Janice.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thanks c g p

The Weaver of Grass said...

Glad you enjoyed my words abe. Interesting about bonfires - because we farm and are well out into the countryside we have a license to have a bonfire to get rid of hedge clippings, branches which fall off trees etc. I love a bonfire, especially in autumn, but you are right about the leaves - birds love investigating them in winter and underneath them is a rich source of food.

Dragonstar said...

I love this. I followed your seasons - the sounds, the scents, the sights. But I've never seen a fieldfare, which is a sadness.