The last smiles of the year

Fall has always been my favorite season (although now — and I have to laugh at myself — spring and summer are competing for the title. Winter occasionally as well, if it weren’t for the horrible darkness). I love that Anne loves fall as well.

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeing.”

Anne, on walking with the whole group at Uppercross
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 10

I’m out for a walk to view some of the last smiles of the year with my new girl Bess.