Finish What You Start

….Tasch here…Wow! I can’t believe that it has already been a week! My, how time does fly! The past few days have been absolutely magical… Over the weekend, I visited the Botanical Gardens in inner city Hamburg. Boy, was it a sight to see!!! Don’t worry. I took some pics. It was breathtaking walking through the greenhouse within the garden and then along the periphery of the park.  There was a bit of a chill outside, but not at all uncomfortable. The temperature just added to the energy of the moment and served as a gentle reminder that Autumn was in full swing.  The leaves on the trees were a combination of radiant golden, brown and yellow colors which stood in stark contrast to the surrounding green foliage and the crystal lake sparkling in the distance.

What does Fall mean to you? Historically, Autumn is known as a “time of harvest.”. From an agricultural standpoint, when a crop is ripe for harvest, farmers go out into the field and reap the “fruit” of their labor.  

Strictly speaking, to harvest is to reap and technically that which you reap is your harvest.  Here is the definition of harvest according to dictionary.com:

Our manner of being will produce a harvest, no doubt, but what kind of harvest we reap and the quality of the harvest is based on a number of factors. Can you guess what they are?  An obvious one and the most important would be the kind of seed. Another factor has to do with the soil. Is it rocky, barren or fertile ground? Another important variable has to do with the cultivation and nourishment of the crop (an area where most of us in this community tend to fall a bit short, but we’re working on it—right? ….and perhaps the most overlooked of all in terms of the big picture has to do with the season.

To Autumn

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,

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,

Drows’d 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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

By John Keats

Keeping It Real,

Natascha “Tasch”