I noticed some mysterious flower petals, pale-yellow ones scattered like tiny stars on the stone path next to my little herb patch in the early morning. Looking up at the Cypress tree above the path, I was confused was to where they’d come from. I inspected the herbs to see who their possible owner could be, but found no clues. Perhaps they were a gift from the faeries?

Later on, after lunch I sat in the garden for stillness with a cup of tea and some poetry. I heard the sound of buzzing bees and looked up. What I didn’t see earlier was the tall palm tree towering over the cypress, so still and silent that I’d forgotten it was there. It wore a brilliant bunch of pale-yellow flowers just below its leaves. Mystery solved. Bees waltzed around them, dizzy from sweet scents and nectar.

All autumn, those tiny flowers will drop their petals and grow into stone-like palm fruit. All winter, I will hear the palm fruit fall from their heights, in the dead of the icy night, blending the story of their journey back down to the Earth with the music of the wintry darkness.

And so signs of the shifting seasons are beginning to set in.