Printable Vintage Art: Autumnal Still Life with a Basket of Blackberries by Hans Zatzka

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
― Samuel Butler

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.
― Shauna Niequist

Vintage painting titled “Autumnal Still Life with a Basket of Blackberries” by Hans Zatzka (1859-1945); oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Don't you simply love that little butterfly fluttering just above the mushrooms? What are you harvesting or collecting from your autumn garden this year?

Digitally enhanced version of the vintage artwork can be downloaded as a 11” x 8” @ 300 ppi JPEGs here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: Early Fall in My Garden (2025)

Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise.
The birds are consulting about their migrations,
the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air,
while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
― George Eliot

With the onset of cooler weather, garden tasks turn to include the splitting and transplanting of perennials. Here, I've managed to divide several large clumps of Echinacea ‘Cheyenne Spirit’ (see my picture above). ‘Cheyenne Spirit’ was introduced by Kieft-Pro Seeds in 2012. It is a well-branched, sturdy coneflower that won the 2013 AAS (All-America Selections®) award and Europe's FleuroSelect Gold Medal award for garden performance. It flowers the first year in a wide range of bloom colors, including purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, cream or white ray flowers with a brown cone. It grows 2 to 2.5 feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide [Source: Missouri Botanical Garden]. I do have many other varieties of coneflowers in my garden including ‘Magnus,’‘Fragrant Angel,’‘Ruby Giant,’‘White Swan’ and ‘Green Twister.’ Next year, I intend to add ‘Primadonna Deep Rose’ and ‘Starlight.’

In the process of planting and generally cleaning up my garden beds, lo and behold, I was stunned and thrilled to find a solitary lily still blooming late into the year (see photo below)! This is by far the latest I have seen any of my lilies bloom. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce ‘Miss Feya’. Lilium Miss Feya has large rosy red flowers with a white edge and a speckling of black dots. The flowers are fragrant and measure 3-6“ on stems that stand 6 to 8 feet tall. After it is established it will produce multiple stems with a mass of blooms in late July and early August. Miss Feya is an Orienpet hybrid, a cross between an Oriental lily and a Trumpet lily which combines the tall, strong stems of the Trumpets with the fragrance and shape of the Oriental lilies. These hybrids have an increased ability to withstand late spring frosts as well as hot summer days [Source: Chicago Botanical Garden]. Since this is a 1st-year plant for me (I planted 3 bulbs earlier this spring, and this was the only bulb that flowered), the stem is still very short, and produced only this single flower. I will wait eagerly to see what happens with this particular variety next year.

Have you made any joyful or unexpected discoveries in your early autumn garden? Feel free to drop a comment below if you would like to share. Meanwhile, I hope you are experiencing thus:

I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
― Wendy Delsol

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Vintage Art Appreciation: A Wooded Path in Autumn by H.A. Brendekilde

A Wooded Path in Autumn, 1902
by Hans Andersen Brendekilde (1857 – 1942)
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground.
― Andrea Gibson

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
— Anne Lamott