Leaf Fall
Well, that's it. Children and students are back at school, college, and university. Politicians are back in Parliament and summer 2016 is ending. We are heading toward 'Leaf-Fall.' Burnt orange crispy leaves fall from the trees, the sun shines bravely but hazy, the apples turn brown on the dead yellow grass and the first phlox appears.... " It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty: but I just cannot bear to see another summer, go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means." Vita Sackville-West. Autumn inevitably brings chillier seas, a thought that has never really occurred to me, but it does today as I think of the hundreds of thousands of souls who will be boarding their death-boats to try living. Autumn will b...