Hunting For Autumn

I spent a lovely wee while in Geilston Garden on Tuesday. It would have been longer only it had taken so long to get out of the house that it was nearly closing time. Still, I was on the hunt for all things 'Autumn' as that's the theme this month over at PHOTO CLUB Helensburgh and decided that if anywhere would be showing signs, it would be there. I was not wrong and I found colourful leaves, toadstools, dried out flowers and pumpkins all in less than an hour! But I think my favourite scene was of these barrows, almost matching the leaves that I was standing under, because they reminded me of garden work which seems to me most pleasurable in autumn.

In winter my hands sieze up in the cold, in spring the wind and the rain make miserable companions, in summer, hard labour gets me sweaty and there are too many stinging, biting, buzzing things to fear. Autumn on the other hand is just about the perfect time to get out into a garden; the weather tends towards coolness not coldness so you don't overheat but instead generate just enough warmth to keep you comfy; the flying insects have generally given up their quest to suck your blood and you get the benefit of new things to look at in addition to the changing nature of the old things: toadstools - endlessly fascinating, nuts falling down around our feet, apples to harvest. Smells. Warm, woody, damp, earthy, leafy, mossy. I wondered if there was a word for the 'smell of autumn' in the same way that we have a word for the 'smell of when rain hits dry earth' and so far I haven't found one.

Petrichor is the rain word - you've probably heard of it already. Interestingly you've probably only ever heard of it in the context of someone explaining what it means. Apparently there are relatively few instances of it being used 'in a sentence' to describe the smell. "Ah the smell of petrichor in the morning!", that sort of thing. It's almost always someone telling you that this word means that thing. Perhaps because the word was invented by scientists and not something that emerged naturally out of general public use? But also perhaps because we English speakers tend not to use words to describe smells, other than those words which are describing the things that produce the smells. We say something is lemony, musky, earthy but we don't have a separate word for the smell of a lemon, or the smell of earth (unless it was dry until it was recently hit by rain!) I mention all this mainly because of a conversation with a friend where he mentioned that his family don't like the word 'autumnal'. Nobody says 'springnal' or 'summernal'. It seems pretentious. I get it but one thing nobody has ever said is that the English language has any logic to it. We've all laughed at those passages written to make use of the ridiculous way words spelled similarly such cough and plough don't rhyme, the ones that make use of the fact that profit and prophet do. My least favourite words are the ones that look the same but depending on pronunciation mean different things. And I think they should be avoided at all costs in brands and slogans. Take Live Argyll. Is it live or live? I've heard it said both ways. I think it probably ought to be live but only yesterday heard someone one calling it live, and without me taking the time to try and write those out phonetically you're none the wiser are you? Gosh, we're a long way from yellow barrows. Sorry.