Flower Fairies of the Autumn

 Autumn will always be my very favorite season.  It seems to be coming a little later this year, the trees hit their peaks at the end of October and November is still burnished red and gold.  I like to take this little book out and display it with the rest of our Fall decorations.  The colors and drawings and poems are just right.  It's also fun to look for the plants and trees Barker illustrates while we are out on our walks.  

The sweet Spring came,

And lovely Summer:

Guess, then, her name- 

This latest-comer!

Flower Fairies of the Autumn

Cicely Mary Barker

Celia Planted a Garden

Celia Planted a Garden

Phyllis Root and Gardy D. Schmidt

illustrated by Melissa Sweet 2022

I only recently became familiar with Celia Thaxter through her beautiful poetry.

 Have patience; here are flowers and songs of birds,

 Beauty and fragrance, wealth of sound and sight,

 All summer's glory thine from morn till night,

And life too full of joy for uttered words

And I have been reading in stops and starts her book "An Island Garden" about her summers spent gardening on the island of Appledore off of New Hampshire in the 19th century. 

This children's book is a nice companion with collage-like pages and interspersed quotes. 

An Island Garden

originally published in 1894 and illustrated by Childe Hassam

 

Anna's Summer Song

Summer is well underway.  The days have been hot and humid and the cicadas are in full chorus.  Lena Anderson's pictures, each featuring a flower or plant are full of Summer feelings.  The poems by Mary Steele are fine, (some better than others) describing such summer things as honeysuckle scent at night, ferns in the rain, and cornflowers by the road.  Some books are just easily appealing, like long summer days...

Anna's Summer Song

Mary Q. Steele

pictures by Lena Anderson 1988

Rosy's Garden

Rosy's Garden

A Child's Keepsake of Flowers

Satomi Ichikawa 1990

We stretched this one out over several nights of reading.  Ichikawa's pictures make you feel like you are right there in the middle of an English cottage garden.  Rosy has gone to stay with her grandmother for the summer and each page tells a little story or some history or information about the flowers in her grandmother's garden.  

Other books by Satomi Ichikawa:

Suzette and Nicholas in the Garden

A Floral Fantasy

Just in time for spring- more of Walter Crane's beautiful flower illustrations.  A nice companion book to Flora's Feast a Festival of Flowers.

In an old world garden dreaming

Where the flowers had human names,

Methought, in fantastic seeming,

They disported as squires and dames.

A Floral Fantasy

Walter Crane 1899

A Child's Book of Flowers

One time Henry and I took this book outside to see how many of the flowers we could find in the wooded part of our backyard.  There's not too much information given on each, but the vintage illustrations are nice and it's an interesting selection of wildflowers.

A Child's Book of Flowers

Irma Wilde 1952

These Trillium grow naturally in our woods.  It wasn't till we saw this picture that we identified them.  Ours have white flowers.

I love Jack-in-the Pulpits.  They're always a treat to find in the woods- every year we get about a dozen or so.  I wish I knew of a way to propagate them.

You might also like these books:

My Big Book of the Outdoors

Mushrooms Ferns and Mosses

Flora's Feast A Festival of Flowers

What Tree Is It?