Instead of ‘New England in the Fall’ think ‘Northamptonshire in Autumn’

Autumn - season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and all that. I love this time of year.

One of my favourite Autumnal activities is picking blackberries. I always did this as a child with my family and it reminds me of those happy, carefree days when all you had to worry about was going back to school after the long summer holidays and what your new teachers would be like.  I also love the colours of Autumn - seeing the trees change from their varying shades of green to rich hues of gold and brown.  I’m hoping that we enjoy a mild Autumn and bask in an ‘Indian Summer’. I didn’t know why we used this term, so I did a little research - I’ll share with you what I discovered.

I didn’t realise that it was a reference to Native North Americans. Apparently, the Native Americans who lived on the eastern seaboard used to depend on extended periods of fi ne, quiet sunny weather at this time of year to complete their harvest and to gather stores of food to see them through the long, harsh winter.

The area in which they lived is renowned for its high temperatures and high humidity levels during the summer, starting in June and not subsiding until September. But the Autumn offered them more comfortable working conditions, in which they could get the harvest done without the risk of heatstroke. They noted that practically every Autumn produced at least one spell of warm weather, many had two or three.  Interestingly, some claim that an Indian Summer cannot come until after the fi rst damaging frost of Autumn, or after a severely cold episode sometimes known as a ‘Squaw Winter’.

The Indian Summer expression gained wide usage in this country in the 1950s, and it quickly became linked to those spells of unseasonably warm weather which occur from time to time here during our Autumn.

Whatever the weather, Indian Summer or not, enjoy the Autumn and see you in November!

Thanks for reading, please visit my blog and Northants Telegraph column too. Many thanks, Hx

www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/helen-bach
www.helenbachuk.blogspot.co.uk

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