What could be more Autumnal than Quince's?

Autumn and 'mellow fruitfulness' at the little yellow cottage across the road 

I remember when the Quince tree across the road in the garden of the yellow cottage, started off as a smart little white Japonica Chaenomeles 'Alba' on a standard!  This was when the original owners were restoring the cottage and 'landscaping' the garden.  Subsequent owners have been much more 'relaxed' about it all and gradually the white Japonica known as an ornamental quince, reverted back to its original species - the fruiting Quince, known botanically and rather dauntingly as, Cydonia oblonga.  A large fruiting tree, it has become increasingly popular as an ornamental landscape tree in it's own right, because of it's attractive umbrella like shape, and lush green leaves, not to mention it's spectacular golden fruitful globes in Autumn, and pretty white blossoms in spring.
I think the golden globed tree, Cydonia oblonga is much more impressive in front of the yellow cottage than the clipped and primped standard Chaenomeles 'Alba' could ever have been.




While back at the blue cottage it is all 'Season of mists'

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​ 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' - that overworked quote from the Keats poem
'Ode to Autumn', but it is this single line which to me epitomises Autumn better than anything else I know.  And makes me want to read more - so more you have my friends - well the first verse anyway just to whet your appetite.   

​"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-eaves run; 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,         5
  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,  10
  For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."

And this is only the first verse.    If you don't already have an anthology on your bedside table, now is the time to unearth a volume containing Keats poetry, and 'Ode to Autumn'.  Even on dreary rainy autumn days like today, this poem will bring mellow autumn sun into your life.​

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