Harvest Time

 

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Cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green
Strawberries are sweeter than any I've seen
Beetroots purple and onions white
All grow steadily day and night!

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broad beans are sleeping in their blankety bed

Blackberries are juicy and rhubarb’s sour
Marrows fattening hour by hour
Gooseberries hairy and lettuces fat
Radishes round and runner beans flat

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broad beans are sleeping in their blankety bed.

Orangey carrots and turnips cream
Reddening tomatoes that used to be green
Brown potatoes in little heaps
Down in the darkness where the celery sleeps

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broad beans are sleeping in their blankety bed.

 

Children at the local primary school have been practising this song. It's one that my own children sang many years ago at their harvest festival.

 

I have fond memories of harvest festivals I attended as a child at Greenhill Methodist Church in Bradford. There was always a wonderful display of fruit, vegetables and flowers, a large bread loaf shaped like huge sheaf of corn, and a glass of water and piece of coal (fruits of the earth). The smell was wonderful. The scent of chrysanthemums still triggers a memory of those festivals. 

 

Our mum sent us along with a basket, covered in coloured crepe paper and full of fruit and veg. At the end of the service it would all be distributed to local sick and elderly people. Nowadays, it’s tinned and dried food that's collected and delivered to those who need it - a much better idea.

 

 "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."  

Robert Louis Stevenson

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/harvest-quotes

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Share this Quote Robert Louis Stevenson
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/harvest-quotes

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Share this Quote Robert Louis Stevenson
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/harvest-quotes

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Share this Quote Robert Louis Stevenson
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/harvest-quotes

 

Writing prompts:

• What have you harvested in your life so far? Write about it for six minutes. 
  
• What seeds are you planting right now in the hope of reaping a harvest later? Write about them and how those seeds will grow.
• What scent triggers a memory for you? Recall that memory in your writing.