Faint smells of autumn touched the air, the scent of ripening apples, a soreness of dead leaves, cornstalks drying in the fields.

From now until the end of October, the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York will be ablaze with color, as ripening red apples stand out against the green leaves of the trees, and the sumacs turn crimson.

Most of the cottages have gardens attached, growing flowers and vegetables, and there a small orchard displaying its ripening apples'.

The fruit trees were fenced in for protection, though many a clever horse stretched his neck far enough to nip ripening apples off the nearer trees.

In August it was a place of shady sweetness, fragrant with the odour of ripening apples, full of dear, delicate shadows.

As he did this now, staring up at the sky, it seemed to Tom that MacGowan's open eye had grown almost as big as one of the ripening apples on the tree.

Even as beautiful a woman as Viviane - there are too many ripening apples on the tree, no?

But he was on hand with the rest of us that evening, interest or no interest, in Uncle Stephen's Walk, where the ripening apples were beginning to glow like jewels among the boughs.

And there is a harvest of ripening apples.