As the weather gets chillier and the leaves change colour and drift downwards, Cara Kliman shares some of her thoughts about autumn. She has also been chatting to people heading in the direction of Heaton Moor Park about what they enjoy most about this time of year.
Autumn has always been my favourite season; I’m at my happiest in a comfortable chair reading a book, with a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit next me. Autumn seems particularly conducive to doing just that.
We live right opposite Heaton Moor Park, and I also love `watching the fiery autumn colours creeping onto the trees I can see from our windows.
But what do other people in our area enjoy about autumn? I took to the streets to find out.
‘I like the fact that it’s the season where I cut everything back in the garden, before the winter frosts arrive. I like looking at the emptyish space and thinking that it’ll regrow and come back to life, and how it might look different the following year.’
– Jane, 61, retired school teacher
‘Autumn means it’s nearly Halloween and I’m going to be a spider this year and me and Toby have been saving toilet roll middles and we’re going to put them on strings to make eight legs each and we’re going to paint hairs on them.’
-William, 5.
‘I change my breakfast for the season, my summer breakfast is full-fat yogurt and nuts, but for autumn it’s porridge with honey and fruit, so I’m looking forward to starting having that.’
– Beth, 45, full-time parent and former solicitor
‘I’m glad to see more robins around again, it always makes me think they’re here to remind us that Christmas is coming down the road.’
– Colin, 55, systems engineer
‘I always make blackberry jam and blackberry and apple crumble, I’ve been freezing the blackberries already this year and I’m picking the apples from my garden at the moment and then I’ll get started. I’ll give a lot of the jam away but we always end up eating all of the crumbles. No one else gets a look in!’
– Simon, 71, retired civil servant
‘Our dogs Boris and Toffee love romping on piles of autumn leaves. Makes a lot of mess in the garden but we don’t mind.’
– Musa, 32, artist and art teacher
‘Food, food, food. And leaves. But mainly autumn food, hello baked potatoes, soup, gingerbread, home-baked bread. Love autumn. Love it.’
– Hattie, 62, insurance broker.
‘ It’s my sister Amelia’s birthday in October, I’m a summer birthday but she is an autumn birthday and this year she’s having a cycling party and a pink bicycle cake. With a bell!’
– Libby-Rose, 8
‘I like seeing the conkers in autumn, when I was a girl we used to play conkers at school and we soaked them in Sarsons Malt Vinegar overnight and then baked them in the oven. My granddaughter says you can paint them in nail polish to make them hard. I don’t know about that, but I was always a champion and my conkers never cracked.’
– Julie, 89, retired administrator/secretary
‘I get up early to walk the dogs in Heaton Moor Park and I love it when the trees are changing and autumn is in the air, and we’re in the park, nice and early before the school run, the dogs, me, and my ginormous cup of coffee,’
– Ranak, 37, works part-time for a mental health charity
And here is the recipe for a Apple and Blackberry Crumble.
