Autumn letter

Hello, Here is a letter to you from me. I very much hope you will like receiving it, despite our never having met. I don’t know anything about you or the things you like doing, but I hope that you are able to summon up memories and images that help to sustain you through this time.

Walking out into my small garden this morning, the air was crisp, cold and very definitely autumnal – scarf weather! It has been the second night of frost, but even though the light seems thinner now, the sky is a wonderful, clear blue and the sun is shining. The blackbirds haven’t been around much for the last couple of months, but they have suddenly returned from farms and fields and it’s good to see, and hear, them again. I wonder if the two sitting on top of my trellis fence, eyeing up the clusters of orange berries on my rowan tree, are the same birds which were here in spring? I’ve heard they often come back to the same garden. There are other berries for them here too – and other colours to enjoy. A few leaves have dropped, but most are still turning, and there are splashes of fiery reds and deep bronzes between tangles of golden nasturtiums and wispy blue clumps of Love-in-a-mist’ – which keeps flowering on.

It is a daily pleasure to be able to come outside and see tiny changes – this morning it was finding the first, white Christmas rose hiding under a fern. It seems so important at the moment to take things one day at a time, and to notice the small things. I hope that you will enjoy seeing everything with fresh eyes too. I wish you well and everything for the future that you wish yourself.

Gill, November 2020 – This thoughtful letter was sent to the hospital for the benefit of patients who may be isolated

Read more

Download ‘Take the time’ Issue 3 – Autumn 2020 edition (pdf)

Send us your contribution

We love to include some of your own reflections in future posts and in our monthly print edition ‘Elevate your mood’ or quarterly printed tabloid ‘Take the time’. Why not write a few lines, try a poem or send us picture on the general theme of winter into spring? Email to ArtCare or send to ArtCare, Block 29, Salisbury District Hospital, Salisbury SP2 8BJ.