A Message for You from a Falling Autumn Leaf

Marlane Ainsworth
16 hours ago
2 min read

And a lovely Mother’s Day gift idea

A smiling young woman in black top and white skirt and hair pinned up holds the book "What my Garden Told Me" in a bookshop, surrounded by bookshelves, books and a vase of white iris, — Merribeth, who created the artwork for "What My Garden Told Me", poses in a Perth bookshop selling the title.

This is an appropriate time of year to write about Mother’s Day and autumn leaves so I’ve combined the two subjects for you.

Below is a modified excerpt about autumn leaves from my book What My Garden Told Me, which takes you on a journey through the garden at Evergreen to reveal the messages and symbolism nature throws at you every day.

It would make a lovely Mother’s Day gift!

If you don’t have a copy yet, hurry to Paperbark Merchants in Albany, the Environment Centre in Denmark or click one of the links below the article to purchase your eBook or paperback copy from Amazon.

Or buy one for a friend!

Falling Autumn Leaves

It’s the time of falling leaves at Evergreen. Brightly coloured, almost iridescent leaves from willows, an American Ash, liquid ambers, a purple-leafed sycamore, and an ornamental pear tree are releasing themselves from their stems and fluttering and spinning to the ground to form compost for next year’s growth.

My favourite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote a poem called “Spring and Fall” in which he gently informs a child, who is grieving at the falling leaves, that she is really grieving for herself. His message is that life will send her lots of ups and downs, many sorrows, many endings.

Leaves fall. People fall.

We either lose personal control or get blown by forces beyond our control.

Autumn Messages

Falling is a part of life.

We learn the most when we’re falling.

We learn about ourselves.

We learn what love is.

We’re outside our comfort zone and we’re forced to change.

Just like when an autumn leaf falls and displays its amazing colours, aspects of ourselves are released as we fall: compassion, patience, acceptance, generosity.

And when we’re down on the ground like a spent autumn leaf, as low as we can go, we start to be of use in ways we never have been before.

A fall implies a new path opening, a new perspective revealing itself, and hitherto unknown qualities emerging.

Like an autumn leaf, let’s go willingly into the fall.

A quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours II:

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.