Passing Season
Almost all the stubble in sight is bare -now. The sheaves have gone and the fields present a tidy appeafance they never seem to have at any other time of the year. The brows are shorn and the soft sunlight of autumn falls on them in the afternoon from a lower angle than it did in June or July. Once again the wasps are at the window, for the air is colder. At -dusk the owls are more active, calling through the trees of the wood and fighting in the half-light to perching places on the edges of fields that give less cover now that harvest is in. Pigeons are gleaning the. stubble in the morning and late afternoon while one or two keep watch in the tops of prominent trees. On the road up into the back country one encounters little parties of women and children with baskets on their arms and walking sticks to lay back the bramble bushes, for the sharper air that makes the trout rise again always hastens the ripening of the berries and brings out those who have a taste for blackberry jam and like the mellow sunlight of September.
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