October Days

OCTOBER DAYS

 Fresh October brings the pheasants,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

 October was called Wynmonarth by the Anglo-Saxons - the wine making month

A Good October and a good blast

Will blow the hog his acorns and mast

 Villagers in the past relied on pannage - the law allowing them access to the woods for their pig - so they could fatten on acorns and beech mast before being killed next month.

Pale amber sunlight falls across

The reddening October trees,

That hardly sway before a breeze,

As soft as summer: summer's loss

Seems little, dear, on days like these!

                                                                                            Ernest Dowson 

 St Luke's Day is the 18th of October and there is often a spell of fine,sunny weather at this time which is known as St. Luke's little summer.

There are lots of old weather sayings, no idea if they are right or wrong!

Hard frosts in October means we'll have a mild January

For every fog in October there will be snow in winter  

Full moon in October without frost, no frost until full moon in November 

 Then of course there is Halloween on the 31st. Not something that was celebrated when I was little or even in the 1970's. When I worked on a mobile library in around 1977ish one of our stops was by a USAF housing estate and I can remember seeing all their houses decorated with pumpkins, lights and pictures of ghosts and thinking how odd that was. Now the shops are stocked with imported junk since the beginning of the month!

We were much more interested  in Guy Fawkes night - as the 5th of November was called back in the day.

This is the October page of my Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady colouring book.

I traced the picture onto my new watercolour paper pad and then looked in the Edwardian Lady Diary book to find her original only to find that the picture on the right for October isn't taken from one page of the book but put together from 3 different paintings.




I started painting the tracing (which is back to front because I couldn't be bothered to go over it twice) with my watercolour pencils but got the colours of the birds all wrong. Even with my tin of 40 colours I didn't have anything pale enough for the birds which are supposed to be Yellow Hammers! Ha!
At least the Elderberries look right, except that by October Elderberries are all gone. Perhaps the climate has changed since Edwardian times.

 I shall have another go with the water-colour pencils for Novembers picture.


Many thanks for all the comments on Saturdays post and hello and welcome to 3 new followers.


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Sue