Summer Ends, And Autumn Comes,

Of All The Everyday Plants Of The Earth, Grass Is The Least Pretentious And The Most Important To Mankind. It Clothes The Earth Is An Unmistakable Way. Directly Or Indirectly It Provides The Bulk Of Man's Food, His Meat, His Bread, Every Scrap Of His Cereal Diet. Without Grass We Would All Starve, We And All Our Animals. And What A Dismal Place This World Would Be!

Autumn Is The Eternal Corrective. It Is Ripeness And Color And A Time Of Maturity; But It Is Also Breadth, And Depth, And Distance. What Man Can Stand With Autumn On A Hilltop And Fail To See The Span Of His World And The Meaning Of The Rolling Hills That Reach To The Far Horizon?

A Root, A Stem, A Leaf, Some Means Of Capturing Sunlight And Air And Making Food - In Sum, A Plant. The Green Substance Of This Earth, The Chlorophyll, Is All Summed Up In The Plants. Without Them We Perish, All Of Us Who Are Flesh And Blood.

Summer Is A Promissory Note Signed In June, Its Long Days Spent And Gone Before You Know It, And Due To Be Repaid Next January.

Catch A Vista Of Maples In That Long Light And You See Autumn Glowing Through The Leaves.... The Promise Of Gold And Crimson Is There Among The Branches, Though As Yet It Is Achieved On Only A Stray Branch, An Impatient Limb Or An Occasional Small Tree Which Has Not Yet Learned To Time Its Changes.