Garden Chrysanthemums and Asters give us a burst of color in the fall when used to replace the annuals we have enjoyed since spring. These beautiful flowers provide color in our gardens and window boxes until freezing weather arrives.

Autumn flowers are available in many forms and colors range from pure white to yellow, bronze, pink and lavender, coral and salmon, purple, and deep burgundy red.

Ancient people believed that this flower, which was able to endure very cold weather, must have attracted "the soul of the sky and earth" - certainly a health benefit.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200311/16/eng20031116_128344.shtml

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November."

- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting
and autumn a mosaic of them all."

- Stanley Horowitz

"There ought to be gardens for all months in the year,
in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season."

- Sir Francis Bacon

"No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face."

- John Donne

"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on
the feelings, as now in October."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen,
as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Now that summer is leaving us,
enjoy the vibrant autumn colours.

Thank you for the post Inda.

Today is the first day of autumn, but we still have beautiful summer weather.
The autumn flowers are everywhere now and they are colourful and bright.
We bought some pots and put them by our entrance to the house. It makes things very cheerful.

Love,
Vicky

Thank you for the beautiful post.

I like this time of the year. The flowers are very bright and cheerful. The weather is nice and warm, not too hot or humid. The air feels fresh and clean.

Have a nice week everyone.

Sincerely,
Gisele

Thank you for the beautiful post.
I can't believe that fall is here already. Where did the time fly?

I picked some pots of Chrysanthemums also on the weekend and put them in front of my house. I planted some in the garden as well. They will be lovely until the frost, and maybe with some luck they will come back next year.

Love,
Sue

Thank you dearestestestest Inda and all!!! What a beeeeautiful, colorful topic!

I couldn't have said it better:

quote:

Originally posted by dear Gisele:
Thank you for the beautiful post.

I like this time of the year. The flowers are very bright and cheerful. The weather is nice and warm, not too hot or humid. The air feels fresh and clean.

Have a nice week everyone.

Sincerely,
Gisele

What fun!

I found a great site about the colors:

http://www.tooter4kids.com/autumn/why_do_leaves_change_color.htm

quote:

Each bud on a tree is the beginning of a new leaf. The sun warms the bud and the new leaf begins to grow. As the leaf grows it starts to make its own food.

Each leaf is like a tiny food factory. The leaf uses sunlight, things in the air, water and a green matter called CHLOROPHYLL. (CHLOR-RO-FILL)

The green chlorophyll covers up the other colors of the leaf. It covers up the other colors so we can see only green leaves.

When fall begins, the leaf starts to die. There is less sunlight because the days are shorter. The leaf no longer makes food.

When the leaf begins to die, the leaf no longer makes food. The chlorophyll breaks down and the green color begins to disappear.

All the hidden colors--the reds, yellows, oranges, and browns can now be seen!

Love and AUTUMN COLORS light, Teom

Thanks you all for your cheerful and colourful replies.
This is a nice time of the year here.

Love, Inda

I love the kitty chasing the leaves.

Claude Monet left us a beautiful painting of Asters. I am sure that he grew them in his garden at Giverny.

Asters are nice in a vase and they keep for a long time.

This is the season when the wild ones are blooming beautifully and with abandon over much of the country.

Thank you for the lovely thread.
Autumn is really here, and it is very beautiful.

Love,
yoko


From the early section of the love poems of the Kokinoshu.

In the autumn fields
mingled with the pampas grass
flowers are blooming
should my love too, spring forth
or shall we never meet?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sugawara Michizane (845-903): The autumn breeze rises

The autumn breeze rises
on the shore at Fukiage--
and those white chrysanthemums
are they flowers? or not?
or only breakers on the beach?

The Last Chrysanthemum by Thomas Hardy

Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.



This is a bit sad, so let us enjoy the garden wit pleasure while it lasts.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Wither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

Sara Teasdale



Wild Asters



In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever little daisies
Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.

_____________________________________________

Actually I like wild Asters, and I don't think that they are stupid at all.

What a funny poem

Thank you Vicky for the beautiful Monet painting. Those are wild Asters. They grow here wild in nature.