10 ways to embrace Autumn

• Bring the outdoors in. Armed with secateurs or old scissors gently and respectfully take a bunch of eucalyptus leaves, pick up a fallen branch from a deciduous tree in all its golden garb, and collect rose hips, dinner plate sized leaves, gum nuts or seed pods. The earthy colour palette will enhance the warmth of your home and serve as a gentle reminder that growth and life is all around even as the light fades.
• Roll beeswax candles in anticipation of earlier sunsets. A quiet and practical task that imbues the home with the scent of bees; their industry an inspiration for plotting and planning Autumnal projects. The glow of a candle also does wanders for a restless, wind-swept spirit as does diffusing orange and cinnamon essential oils.
• Ignite your children’s play space with earthy treasures. A few secondhand baskets filled with gum nuts, seed pods, and river stones bring an honest and tactile element to their imaginative play. And perhaps those cooler evenings could be whiled away by sanding some tree blocks to include too.
• Take regular nature walks with no intentions or set destination. Wander about your neighbourhood and feel the crunch of leaves underfoot, notice the changing light and ponder nature’s bounty of seeds in preparation of Winter’s hibernation. And if it’s windy you may be privy to some of the inventive seed pod dispersal tricks that plants are bestowed with; helicopter seeds never lose their charm.
• Make Sunday afternoon a time of preserving late Summer’s bounty. Berries can be frozen and a surplus of tomatoes can be canned or frozen to bolster hearty soups when hot days are a hazy memory. And the waning apples and pears in your fruit bowl will be gently roused in the pot with vanilla and cardamom; their new-found sprightliness will brighten your morning porridge for the coming week.  And drying some apple rings is a whimsical pastime reminiscent of Famous Five adventures.
• Go on a fungi walk…then grow some of your own.
• Begin a small vegetable garden filled with leafy greens and brassicas. Think of kale and broccoli as hardy old work horses and the “other worldly” romanesco, brussell sprout towers and rainbow chard as the dressage ponies; a combination of the two will make for both hearty and fanciful Winter fare.
• Armed with a small basket and an inquisitive eye, collect an assortment of leaves. Back indoors make crayon rubbings of them, paint them, draw on them, print with them, make a crown with them, dip them in beeswax or simply tape them to a wall to dissect with your eyes as you pass by in your daily domesticity.
• Begin a weekly routine of soaking some beans. Prepping your own legumes is an incredibly simple and thrifty way to bring earthy nourishment to your table. And it’s a subtle revolution against the treadmill existence of consuming we are slowly being guided on.
• As trees tune up for their fiery symphony, take some time to explore their majesty. Note the variety of tree shapes and explore their diverse bark coats (both visually and with touch). If you happen upon a cut branch, fallen log or tree stump, dip your toes into the world of dendrochronology – the science of determining the age of a tree by counting the growth rings in a cross-section of its trunk. Learning about our earth shouldn’t be something that ceases once rhythmic school days are swapped for the whirligig of adult life.

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