From the gardener’s point of view, November can be the worst month to be faced: Nature is winding things down, the air is cold, skies are gray, but usually the final mark of punctuation to the year as yet to arrive the snow; snow that covers all in the garden and marks a mind-set for the end of a year’s activity. There is little to do outside except to wait for longer days in the new year and the joys of coming holidays.
Peter Loewer

November is the eleventh and penultimate month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days. November begins in western tropical astrology with the sun in the sign of Scorpio (astrology) and ends in the sign of Sagittarius (astrology). Astronomically speaking, the sun actually begins in the constellation of Libra, passes through Scorpius from approximately the 24th through the 29th and ends in the constellation of Ophiuchus, which is the only zodiacal constellation that is not associated with an astrological sign. In Latin, novem means nine. November was also the ninth month in the Roman calendar until a monthless winter period was divided between January and February. In old Japanese calendar, the month is called Shimo tsuki (??).
November Wikipedia

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves
with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed,
are as crisp as autumn air.
Eric Sloane

All in November’s soaking mist
We stand and prune the naked tree,
While all our love and interest
Seem quenched in the blue-nosed misery.
Ruth Pitter, 1897-1992, The Diehards, 1941

How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age.
Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child’s personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful.
Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people.
Sir John Templeton

When I look into your eyes
I can see a love restrained
But darlin’ when I hold you
Don’t you know I feel the same
‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it’s hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain.
Guns N’ Roses, November Rain

The white sun
like a moth
on a string
circles the southpole.
A. R. Ammons, Late November

The name ‘November’ is believed to derive from ‘novem’ which is the Latin for the number ‘nine’. In the ancient
Roman calendar November was the ninth month after March. As part of the seasonal calendar November is the
time of the ‘Snow Moon’ according to Pagan beliefs and the period described as the ‘Moon of the Falling Leaves’
by Black Elk.
Mystical WWW

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation:
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855, I Celebrate Myself, Line 238

You shared the spark,
You fanned the flame,
You fed the fires,
You passed the Names.
For all those known and
For all unnamed,
For all who have walked the Way;
We raise this toast,
With thanks this day.
Mike Garofalo, Kindreds, Cuttings

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.
William Shakespeare

I saw the lovely arch
Of rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
As the rain swept by.
Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Sara Coleridge

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought
and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November.
Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden

Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
Henri Frederic Amiel

So dull and dark are the November days.
The lazy mist high up the evening curled,
And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;
The place we occupy seems all the world.
John Clare, November

Our Father, fill our hearts, we pray,
With gratitude Thanksgiving Day;
For food and raiment Thou dost give,
That we in comfort here may live.
Luther Cross, Thanksgiving Day

November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.
Emily Dickinson

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!
Thomas Hood, No!

When the trees their summer splendor
Change to raiment red and gold,
When the summer moon turns mellow,
And the nights are getting cold;
When the squirrels hide their acorns,
And the woodchucks disappear;
Then we know that it is autumn,
Loveliest season of the year.
Carol L. Riser, Autumn

Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lotus-Eaters

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Colonel John McRae, In Flanders Fields
November 11th Veteran’s Day in America, Armistice Day, 1918, Remembered

Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
John Greenleaf Whittier

The wild November come at last
Beneath a veil of rain;
The night winds blows its folds aside,
Her face is full of pain.
The latest of her race, she takes
The Autumn’s vacant throne:
She has but one short moon to live,
And she must live alone.
Richard Henry Stoddard, November

Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow.
Lydia Maria Child, Thanksgiving Day, 1845

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
Andrew Wyeth

I am the ancient Apple Queen,
As once I was so am I now.
For evermore a hope unseen,
Betwixt the blossom and the bough.
Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold!
And where the windy grave of Troy?
Yet come I as i came of old,
From out the heart of summer’s joy.
William Morris, Pomona

Every year, in November, at the season that follows the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic hours of autumn, I go to visit the chrysanthemums … They are indeed, the most universal, the most diverse of flowers.
Maeterlinck

The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of.
The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July.
Henry David Thoreau

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind,
That sent a happy dream to him in hell?
Siegfried Sasson, Break of Day, 1918

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and plough’d him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.
Robert Burns, John Barleycorn Harvest Home

Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky,
How beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
There is a poem, there is a song.
Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.
When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with
The music of many leaves,
Which in due season fall and are blown away.
And this is the way of life.
Krishnamurti

The last seed
falls from the sunflower-
empty pond.

Yea, I have looked, and seen November there;
The changeless seal of change it seemed to be,
Fair death of things that, living once, were fair;
Bright sign of loneliness too great for me,
Strange image of the dread eternity,
In whose void patience how can these have part,
These outstretched feverish hands, this restless heart?
William Morris, November

How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;
They have put shawls of fog around them, see!
What if the air should grow so dimly white
That we would lose our way along the paths
Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
Sara Teasdale, A November Night

It’s all a farce, – these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o’er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of a Lowly Life

This is the treacherous month when autumn days
With summer’s voice come bearing summer’s gifts.
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts
Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze
Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,
And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,
The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts
Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning’s rays
Wildly shine upon and slowly melt,
Too late to bid the violet live again.
The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;
Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet’s day of pain?
Helen Hunt Jackson, Autumn Sonnet

On this bleary white afternoon,
are there fires lit up in heaven
against such faking of quickness
and light, such windy discoursing?

While November numbly collapses,
this beech tree, heavy as death
on the lawn, braces for throat-
cutting ice, bandaging snow.
Edwin Honig, November Through a Giant Copper Beech

Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.
Elizabeth Lawrence

Over the river and through the woods
Trot fast my dapple gray.
Spring over the ground
Like a hunting hound
On this Thanksgiving Day, Hey!
Over the river and through the woods
Now Grandmother’s face I spy.
Hurrah for the fun,
Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie.
English folksong, It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

Autumn arrives, array’d in splendid mein;
Vines, cluster’d full, add to the beauteous scene,
And fruit-trees cloth’d profusely laden, nod,
Complaint bowing to the fertile sod.
Farmer’s Almanac (1818)

It was Autumn, and incessant
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves
And, like living coals, the apples
Burned among the withering leaves.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Over the river and through the wood
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the wood
To have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring,
Ting-a-ling-ling!
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!
Linda Maria Child, Over the River

Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,
And all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone.
I already hear the dead thuds of logs below
Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.

All of winter will return to me:
derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,
And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,
My soul will harden into a block of red ice.
Charles Baudelaire, Autumn Song

The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
William Blake, To Autumn

Splitting dry kindling
on a damp November day–
wind-chimes tinkling.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

The acrid scents of autumn,
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
D. H. Lawrence, Dolor of Autumn, 1916

If I’m ever reborn, I want to be a gardener—
there’s too much to do for one lifetime!
Karl Foerster

The snapping of pitch from a burning log,
The faint scent of pine filling the room.
Flames leaping about as if it were a ballet
Performing for its audience.
The soft, comforting glow of candlelight,
Bringing with it serenity and quiet thoughts.
Linda Christensen, Autumn’s Beauty

The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum,
the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on….
A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.
Aldo Leopold

Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
In the eastern sky the rainbow,
Whispered, What is that, Nokomis?
And the good Nokomis answered:
‘Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;
All the wild-flowers of the forest,
All the lilies of the prairie,
When on earth they fade and perish,
Blossom in that heaven above us.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence or of sound,
Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.
Laman Blanchard

All the cabbages in our garden are robust and green to the core;
All the peppers are dead and black, not red anymore.
The onions are thriving, the tomatoes all gone,
The lettuce is rising, the pecans all stored;
It’s wet now in Red Bluff, Winter’s knocking at the door.
Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

Fog in November, trees have no heads,
Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills, the ghost of a man spreads
Dung on dead fields for next year’s crop.
I cannot see my hand before my face,
My body does not seem to be my own,
The world becomes a far-off, foreign place,
People are strangers, houses silent, unknown.
Leonard Clark, Fog in November

I built my cottage among the habitations of men,
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses.
You ask: Sir, how can this be done?
A heart that is distant creates its own solitude.
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze afar towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.
Tao Yuan Ming

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant -
Among other things or one way of putting the same
thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal rose or a lavender
spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been
opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the
way back.
T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, III

Dismal November! me it soothes to view,
At parting day, the scanty foliage fall
From the wet fruit tree, or the grey stone wall,
Whose cold films glisten with unwholesome dew;
To watch the yellow mists from the dank earth
Enfold the neighboring copse; while on as they pass
The silent rain-drops bend the long rank grass
Which wraps some blossom’s unmaturéd birth.
Charles Lloyd, To Autumn

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadow less like silence, listening
To silence.
Thomas Hood, Ode: Autumn, 1827

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Robert Frost, My November Guest

The gloomy months of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves.
Joseph Addison

The long awaited
rattle of rain on rooftops-
Thanksgiving Day.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

If it is true that one of the greatest pleasures of gardening lies in looking forward, then the planning of next year’s beds and borders must be one of the most agreeable occupations in the gardener’s calendar. This should make October and November particularly pleasant months, for then we may begin to clear our borders, to cut down those sodden and untidy stalks, to dig up and increase our plants, and to move them to other positions where they will show up to greater effect. People who are not gardeners always say that the bare beds of winter are uninteresting; gardeners know better, and take even a certain pleasure in the neatness of the newly dug, bare, brown earth.
Vita Sackville-West

In the evenings
I scrape my fingernails clean,
hunt through old catalogues for new seed,
oil work boots and shears.
This garden is no metaphor –
more a task that swallows you into itself,
earth using, as always, everything it can.
Jan Hirshfield, November, Remembering

November’s sky is chill and drear,
November’s leaf is red and sear.
Sir Walter Scott

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.
Emily Dickinson

Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.
Edgar A. Guest, Thanksgiving

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content.|
Lin Yutang

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth,
and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning
of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?
Hal Borland

first snow
house sparrows
darken the hedgerow
Ellen Compton

I am rich today with autumn’s gold,
All that my covetous hands can hold;
Frost-painted leaves and goldenrod,
A goldfinch on a milkweed pod,
Huge golden pumpkins in the field
With heaps of corn from a bounteous yield,
Golden apples heavy on the trees
Rivaling those of Hesperides,
Golden rays of balmy sunshine spread
Over all like butter on warm bread;
And the harvest moon will this night unfold
The streams running full of molten gold.
Oh, who could find a dearth of bliss
With autumn glory such as this!
Gladys Harp

Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable, the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown
along the street or road by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.
Both are warnings of chill days ahead, fireside and topcoat weather.
Hal Borland

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold….
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sunburned hands, I used to hold
Since you went away, the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear ol’ winter’s song.
But I miss you most of all my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall.
Johnny Mercer, lyrics, Autumn Leaves

Harvest home, harvest home!
We’ve plowed, we’ve sowed
We’ve reaped, we’ve mowed
And brought safe home
Every load.
Harvest Home Song, Lore and Magick of the Harvest

Crown’d with the sickle, and the sheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o’er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on.
James Thomson, Autumn, 1730

Cornstalks from last summer’s garden now lean toward the kitchen window, and the November wind goes through them in a shudder. Their thin tassels spread out beseeching fingers, and their long bleached blades flutter like ragged clothing.
Rachel Peden

Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are are then prepared to ignore them until the spring.
I am quite sure that a garden doesn’t like to be ignored like this. It doesn’t like to be covered in dust sheets, as though
it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful
it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance.
Beverley Nichols

A sun-drenched sky
on windy autumn day;
out across open fields
passing clouds make shadow play.

Silent beauty in multi-hues
but ominous in a sense;
for though today be delightful
darkness soon gains precedence.
Ray, Psychology of Seasons

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eves, -
Gone Mr. Bryant’s golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson’s sheaves.
Emily Dickinson, Nature: XLIX

When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulet
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
William Cullen Bryant, A Winter Piece

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
William Cullen Bryant

Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods.
William Allingham