The Magic Apple Tree

For a few weeks, everything looks the same, it might still be summer. The leaves on the apple tree are thick and dark and green, the fields beyond are grassy, though there are no flowers at all. Look farther then. The corn has all been cut, and some of the stubble fired, so that those fields are faded yellow and blackened brown, in strips, and one by one they are ploughed, so that the brown earth is visible again. But the trees are, for the moment, as they have been since early July, dusty and dry, but green, still.
      The sun still shines in the middle of the day, too, it is a golden September. At noon, it is very hot indeed, we are still wearing cotton clothes, and the children have gone back to school in summer dresses.
      But day by day, there ate slight changes, subtle alterations in shape, in the mood of the season, it is as though everything is slipping and sliding very gradually downhill, like some great high hayrick sinking into itself as it dries. The year has turned and it is autumn, though we do not fully acknowledge it.

I'm not big on Kindles or other e-readers, but I loved this book. {I have a fond memory of finding a second, nicer copy in a book store in Marblehead and hearing the owner exclaim with happiness as I walked up to the checkout desk.} Four seasons in an English village, with recipes. So, when Karen of Cornflower Books mentioned that Susan Hill's book The Magic Apple Tree was available for Kindles (in the US, too), it made me happy to think that more people would be able to read it.