There is something about September that makes it tempting to hurry autumn along. Perhaps it is because autumn is such an easy season to anticipate. We know what is coming: trees filled with color, crisp mornings, fallen leaves along country lanes, fires lit again, and those darker evenings that make home feel especially inviting. By early September, I’m usually more than ready for all of it. But when I look at England at this time of year, I’m reminded that the change of season is rarely as neat as the calendar makes it seem. September in the English countryside is not necessarily the autumn we picture in our minds. Much of the landscape can still be remarkably green. Cottage gardens may still be flowering. There can be warm afternoons that feel as though summer has every intention of staying a while longer. And yet autumn is there too. It is beginning to show itself in smaller ways—in the changing light, the ripening fruit, the hedgerows, the cooler mornings and the earlier evenings. ...