Autumn can be as much about fire as melancholy and we certainly raked and shifted a big variety of golden fire last week. Guests driving from Inverness to Torridon will find the birch and oaks offering an amazing colour spectacle and when you add the green of Scots Pine among them, it really is spectacular. But leaves they fall and gardeners rake, lift and shift them. The resulting leaf mould will do wonders as a soil conditioner. We are lucky to have horse chestnut and sweet chestnuts amongst our trees and the autumn leaf colour is spectacular. Talking about melancholy I wrote an autumn song lyric which was a reflection on fire leaves, but there’s a lot of summer sunshine stored in them leaves.

Fireleaves

Caught you kicking through the fire leaves
Down by the shining lake
Searching for some release
From your great mistake

It was after you burnt the letters
In a time of haste
Not till some days later
Did you feel the waste

Trying to read the fire leaves
Words upon a smoky page
Looking through the bare trees
Back to a loving age

It was after you burnt the letters
In a time of haste
Not till some days later
Did you feel the waste

Caught you kicking through the fire leaves
Down by the shining lake
Searching for some release
From your great mistake
Les Bates

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