November....

"All in November's soaking mist
We stand and prune the naked tree,
While all our love and interest
Seem quenched in the blue-nosed misery."
- Ruth Pitter, 1897-1992, The Diehards, 1941

Just a couple of days late, the equinoctial gales swept through and finished off the leaf cover on the trees.

It can be a bit depressing this time of year - and these last two lines from Ruth Pitter I think are just an amazing capture of that mood... " all our... interest quenched"

Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL, who died in 1992, was the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1955. Philip Larkin was a big fan of her work. As was C S Lewis (one of my own literary heroes). He once said that if he was the kind of man who got married, he would have wanted to marry Ruth Pitter. Pitter is considered by many Lewis scholars to have had an effect on his writing in the 1940s and 1950s. Actually, of course, Lewis did eventually marry - see the film "Shadowlands" - but don't forget your tissues!