Tuesday Teaser

In honor of today being the first day of Autumn I thought the following quote beautifully applicable for today's Tuesday Teaser:

"There is something very thrilling about standing in a place of shelter while a gale roars by over your head. One tastes the excitement of violence without the fear. Standing beside the herbaceous border under the west wall the air was as still as on a summer's day. Not a petal moved, not a grass blade was stirred, while all about them the October flowers had a brilliance that summer had scarcely known. The massed Michaelmas daisies and goldenrod, the dahlias and chrysanthemums, purple and scarlet and gold, seemed to burn with deeper and deeper passion as one looked at them, and the lawn after the morning's rain worse a green so vivid that one caught one's breath. A bonfire of dead leaves was burning in the corner of the garden, and the acrid smell of its blue smoke, mingled with the smell of wet chrysanthemums and the west wind from the sea was the authentic bittersweet smell of the turning of the year. There was something triumphant about the blaze of color, something of fortitude in the determined quiet under the garden wall, that mocked at dissolution. The gale might roar as it chose, but while that west wall of solid granite stood its ground the end was not yet for the garden. Life was not so easily extinguished, and spring trod upon winter's heels. It flaunted its colors in the face of death, and it laughed under its breath." (Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge, Book 1, Pt 1, Chpt. 1, pg. 10-11)