Late Summer a Sensory Experience - The Colour of Summer
What colour is ‘pursuit of happiness’?
Hello Readers
Welcome to the final post in my August writing challenge: Late Summer, A Sensory Experience. Last week was all about the scent of summer. Where I live the scent of summer has been manure and muck spreading for days now. I think you get used to it when you live in the countryside, but every time a wagon full of pig sh*t rumbles by I still have to cover half my face with my T-shirt.
Late Summer - A Sensory Experience: The Scent of Summer
Hello Readers Welcome to the fourth post in my August writing challenge: Late Summer, A Sensory Experience. Last week was all about the physical sensation of touch and what might be noticed about the world around us through touch. This week it’s all about the scent of summer. I’ve had a busy week. On Sunday I was part of a group…
This week, our last week, we are focussing on sight (see what I did there?) and the colour palette that is this misty, long shadowed end-of-summer month. This week while I have been out with the dog I’ve been noticing how the berries are really starting to ripen now. The haws are the colour of pin pricked blood, the sloes have that slight duskiness to the deep, deep purple of their skins. My two elder trees are full of berries the colour of a lipstick I used to wear in the 1990s, something plum-like and gothic. The berries at the top of the tree are the deepest colour. Every day the trees are full of birds feasting. Right now, as I write this post I can see two fat wood pigeons, a magpie and a jackdaw all swaying on their respective branches, pulling at the berries. I’ve seen, or rather heard, squirrels in the beech trees out in the lane opening the beech nuts and watched the confetti of shell detritus drifting to the tarmac below to create a carpet of crunchy brown. The fields are mostly harvested here. A few deep golden wheat fields are still waiting. It’s been a difficult year for harvest, with so much rain and so few dry spells. The combines are gone from the hills though, and the bales are being collected and driven to barns and yards.
It’s definitely backendish. This morning the air felt crisp. There was a certain blueness to the sky that made me think of frosts. The fields were so dewy I got soaked walking the dog. This was the first day where it’s been too cold to wear shorts from the off. But by lunchtime the sun had burnt this faux autumn off and it was sunshine and warm air, except in the shade. It’s difficult to admit that the summer is nearly over, and I’ll miss my days of bare skin and sandals, but all things must pass, and there is so much to love about autumn. Now though, and for the next two or three weeks we are in the liminal place between seasons. It is a place of change. It is a place where we are not quite experiencing the riot of reds and oranges and crispy leaf walks of autumn, but not quite able to experience the BBQs and patio drinks, the golden evening walks and thick green foliage of summer either. And all the time we experience this change, we are physically and emotionally in change ourselves.
The catalyst for the turn towards autumn for me, and my feelings around it is always the migration of the geese. The geese now fly over my house in thick lines, long lines full of voice and each time I hear them my heart is taken somewhere wintry and still, and it stills me to hear them. In summer I felt vibrant and colourful, in autumn I will feel calm and aware and I want my days to reflect that. I shall change my practice and my focus to fully embrace the season, to be connected to the world around me, the natural world.
This poem by Rachel Fields captures the strange instinct of geese to rise up and migrate. It’s beautiful:
Here we are then, at the end place and at the end of the Sensory Summer writing challenge. Do you remember where we began, in the full heat of the dog days of summer? Now look, we have moved through the fading season. i hope you have enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments.
Journal Prompt
After a long, long wait my husband and I are about to begin preparations for having a new kitchen fitted. This week I went down to B&Q and picked up some of those little cards with paint colours on. I’m going to make a mood board for the kitchen. I’m excited to choose the colour and layout. Cooking and baking are probably my favourite pastime, except reading of course. The change of season is really influencing my choice.
Paint names are wonderful aren’t they. What colour is ‘pursuit of happiness’? Turns out it’s a sort of light lemon. ‘Perennial Pleasure’ is a leafy green, which sounds about right to be fair; if I wanted to be in perennial pleasure it would be somewhere green and vibrant - woodland perhaps. For your journal prompt this week, your last prompt, you actually have a choice of two. Download the last pages here, to put in your folder with the others.
Journal Prompt One
Make a conscious effort to notice the colours around you. If you are able to, step outside, find a place where nature exists (and don’t forget that nature exists in all sorts of areas, urban included) and jot down the colours as you know them - brown, green, dark brown, light gold etc.
Now rename those colours as if they are paint colours. Try to tune into emotional reactions and memories that you might have that would lead you to some more abstract names for the colours. For example, the colour of ripened wheat is the exact same shade as my husband’s hair. I would call that colour ‘silk touch of my fingers in your hair.’
You could explore further here, naming the colours then expanding on those images, those memories. Start thinking about how you might draw this down into creative writing, how might these names and images and abstract associations work in a poem? You might want to try creating a list poem, weaving those experiences into it.
Journal Prompt Two
Collect some paint cards, or raid the batch of the ones you already have, which will be wrapped with an elastic band and kept in one of those plastic takeaway boxes in the Drawer of Clutter if you are anything like me.
Find the ones that are similar to the colours you are seeing right now, at the end of August.
For each of those paint names, think of at least three places or times when you have seen the colour, or one similar, before. What colours are hospital corridors, what colours are cemetery paths, what colour was your grandmother’s skin? Is there a colour you are seeing now that relates? Don’t force it, only capture the colours that mean something to you.
Bonus Journal Question
How is change in the season being reflected in your physical body, how is it being reflected in your emotional life? Remember, your journal is a place for you to expand your thoughts, to be authentic. No one has to read it. Be free with your writing. We’ll be looking further at ‘accepting change’ in the first season of the subscription version of Notes from the Margin. Details further down this page.
Writing Prompt One
This Country Diary article by Phil Gates is a wonderful exploration of the colour of this time of year, from the ancient hedge weighed down with rosy apples, to the yellow and black alder moth caterpillar which is moving north because of climate change.
Where is your favourite hedge? Write a passage of creative non fiction, or a poem, that explores the hedge as it is now, the colours that it contains, the variety within it, and the world that has passed by it. If you don’t have a favourite hedge, find another place that creates a barrier or a border between one place and another. What nature exists there?
Writing Prompt Two
Have a look at this Vicki Feaver poem, and also what she has to say about the connection between poetry and memory:
Usually in poems I use the 'I' voice when I'm writing about autobiographical material. But with 'Sloes' the 'she' who experienced it seemed so far away from me – a different person – that it seemed more honest to write 'she'.
This is an interesting distancing device. For this last prompt, write an autobiographical poem (or passage of creative non fiction) about something you have experienced at this time of year, but instead of using the first person, use third person perspective to distance yourself. Observe yourself, and the place where you are, the environment, the colours.
Dawn Chorus
The Dawn Chorus early morning zoom writing group returns next week, on the 4th September. Come and join me in this peaceful space. I’ve just this morning been working on the inspiration prompts.
You can find out more and book your place here:
And that’s that. Tomorrow the new paid subscription version of my newsletter goes live. I’m very excited about it, but also a bit nervous. Here’s a bit about it:
What’s in Store in September
Notes from the Margin Paid – Season One
September - October - November
The overarching theme for the autumn season is Acknowledging Change. As well as the free Thursday essays, if you sign up for the paid option you’ll receive a Friday post which will include
Bonus essays and book news.
Posts on managing your publishing journey with topics focussed on kindness to self.
Insider knowledge on the publishing industry.
‘How To’ posts.
Regular writing opportunities posts.
Mindful creative practice posts.
Writing prompts and journaling exercises.
This is all aimed at building community, exploring your creative practice, and sharing my own knowledge of navigating the publishing world. Each month will include one journaling exercise and two writing prompts, looking at a different aspect of the season’s theme.
If you enjoy writing poetry and/or creative non-fiction or narrative prose, at whatever level, and for whatever purpose, you’ll find something to enjoy here.
At the end of the season we’ll have a two-hour zoom meet up to celebrate the season and ourselves, including an open mic to showcase some of the writing we’ve been working on.
The theme of Season one – Autumn 2023 - is Acknowledging Change: change in ourselves, change in nature, seasonal change, changing up, changing down, changing values, changing passions. Let’s embrace the shift away from the hard, bright days of summer and embrace the slower pace of autumn, the season of reflection.
Paid members also receive a 15% discount on mentoring and retreats. I hope you’ll join me!
Until next time
x
I absolutely love your description of the berries at the start of this post. Sight loss has disconnected me from this sensory experience but your words recreated it for me. Thank you!
A few lines, nowhere near the requirements of the prompt but something may be germinating:
The mauvy- pink of heather mists the heath, below a grey-white cloud a kestrel hovers. The plumes of golden rod are tarnished now, and rosebay willow herb fast goes to seed. Tall ragwort flowers on, its yellowness undulled, and pollinators thrive.