Romancing Autumn In Singapore

The eternal summer in Singapore makes the colder climate, especially the changing of seasons very appealing. While Spring is fresh and invigorating, Winter is white and reflective, there is something about Autumn that is lush and romantic. Andrea Gibson said “the leaves are all falling and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground.” Jarod Kintz wrote, “I want to say something so embarrassing about September that even the leaves start blushing and turning red.” Yes, there is something about September, even in Singapore. The leaves are not browning. The flowers are still blooming. It is still hot. Yet Autumn is in the air.

Soon it will be the Mid-Autumn Festival. Chinatown is awashed with lantern lights. Romancing Autumn in Singapore is quite sobering. Channeling the feelings of this temperate season in the tropics. Imagining leave in colors other than green. Sensing the chills of lowering temperature. Putting added layers to keep warm. Autumn is the bridge between hot and cold. With leaves looking like flowers, it has the best of both worlds. No wonder to Rose G. Kingsley, ‘autumn is the crowning glory of the year’. So ‘fall has arrived. Behold the changing leaves and enjoy the crisp breeze. Let your eyes take in the bursts of color. Transformation is afoot and hope is in the air’.

Albert Camus’ famous line, ‘Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower’ has a rejoinder in Elizabeth Lawrence’s ‘Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn’. Samuel Butler’s quote that ‘Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits’ suggests this is a time of harvest, a time to reap the fruits of our labour. But mostly, it is an incredibly nostalgic time. There is something ‘significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves’ Joe L. Wheeler declared. And it is also a time to act on anything still not accomplished for the year, almost a last hurray. ‘Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile’, as William Cullen Bryant put it. For me, I remember someone once said, ‘You can’t hide your true colors as you approach the autumn of your lives’.

Just before the death of flowers,
And before they are buried in snow,
There comes a festival season
When nature is all aglow…