Summer's End Melancholy

Autumn used to be my favourite season but now I resist the ending of summer, the shortening of the days, the dying back of plants removing colour from the fields around me.

The farmer pulls up ragwort in the verges and leaves it there to wilt and dry and die, almost like a warning to other ragworts that might be thinking of growing and flowering in the area.  The foxglove finished flowering a while ago and now its four-sided seed pods are open and spilling tiny seeds with every shake from the increasingly cold west winds.

The swallows fly low over the silaged and mucked fields and I calculate unconsciously how many days it will be before they are suddenly gone.