After the sun

How do you feel, after the sun has gone? There is beauty everywhere in the arrival of autumn.

Autumn is here, at least in this part of the world. There may yet be the odd day of unseasonal warmth and sunshine. But the overall trend is toward shorter days, falling leaves and crisper, colder times. There comes a point with each autumn when it feels as though the sun has gone. We get to learn once again how things feel, after the sun.*

Each spring the sun returns fully, bathing the world in its warm glow. Each autumn, the sun falls away again, in some senses bringing an end to the times of abundance and growth. But the hints of new life yet to emerge are there, all the same.

Everything will fall away with time. Each year, autumn gives us a small taste of this eternal truth. Autumn is profoundly beautiful in its own way.

Beauty everywhere

When autumn manifests itself fully, the colour and the life can seem to drain out of the world overnight. But is this really such a bad thing? There is beauty everywhere in the arrival of autumn. Autumn transforms the world around us. The leaves turn from greens to wonderful shades of red, brown and orange that never have and never will lose their capacity to delight and to surprise. The air freshens. The cold wind awakens the autumn leaves for their wild dance through the air in a final gesture of life and motion before they make their graceful, curving drift to the ground. Things fall away.

Fundamental to nature’s cycle of growth, renewal and rebirth is that things must and will wither and fall away. It will happen with or without your consent. Whether or not you accept this is entirely up to you. A fundamental part of your own life is how you come to terms with the inescapable fact that all shall fall away.

The promise of joy and colour

All shall fall away. The sunflowers in my garden have reached the end of their time. As summer fell away, so the bright, radiant sunflower heads bowed and darkened, the leaves around their edges draining of colour and curling inwards.

This has been my first year growing sunflowers. My lovely friend Liz Kentish gifted a packet of sunflower seeds to me and to every guest at the lunch in London to mark my turning 50, back in March this year. Liz encouraged each of us to grow sunflowers in 2023, and to compare the results via social media.

These sunflower seeds were the most delightful and thoughtful gift. As I wrote six months ago in New life emerging, at the very start of the 2023 plant-growing season:

“In Liz’s gift was a joyful and generous seed of inspiration, to bring a little moment of joy and colour to the lives of so many people.

“In each of those sunflower seeds is the promise of joy and colour, to be unlocked by the sun. The promise of new life emerging.

“In each of those sunflowers yet to grow, there will be the seeds of the following year’s sunflowers. New life that will emerge.”

Liz’s gift keeps giving, even as the sunflowers die off. After the sun, every part of the dead sunflowers can and will help nourish ongoing and new life.** The heads of three of this year’s sunflowers are hanging upside down in my greenhouse, so the seeds can dry out to provide food for the birds during winter. I have left their stalks and roots by the garden pond, for any visiting frogs (and, no doubt, a multitude of other creatures) to feed on.

I cherish this gift from Liz. It has truly brought joy to me, as I hope it has to everyone else who received their packet of seeds that day.

Cherish and appreciate the people and things that you love now. Cherish the times when life feels fleetingly beautiful and perfect as they happen. Everything will fall away with time. Autumn is a tiny microcosm of this. Autumn is profoundly beautiful in its own way.

There is beauty in every stage of life. Even in how it falls away. How do you allow yourself to feel as it falls away?

How do you feel, after the sun has gone?

May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.

May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.

IMAGES

• Sunflower photography by MJCarty, October 2023.
• 1930s Japan Travel Poster – 05 (cropped) via Wikimedia Commons.
• Two Cut Sunflowers – My Dream via Wikimedia Commons (by the great Vincent Van Gogh, of course).

FOOTNOTES

* I borrowed the phrase “after the sun” for the title of this post from the lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s The Rain Song, from their Houses of the Holy album. The lyrics in question go as follows: “After the sun a little rain must fall/ Just a little rain.” The Rain Song also boasts what I believe to be the most satisfying final chord of any song (that I can think of). Being ignorant as to the intricacies of music, I have no idea if this chord resolves musical matters in this song, or perhaps does something else entirely. But my god is it lovely.

** I recommend this lovely article on what to do with dead sunflowers.