authentic moncler coats

The cooler days are starting to roll in, but instead of pining over the deteriorating summer, we are more than happy to start embracing autumn! With statement knitwear, autumn-toned playsuits and oh-so-cool coats, we just can’t wait to dig out our knee-high boots and go all-out with layering.

Kick-start your autumn wardrobe now with our edit of the best autumn buys – new in to your favourite high-street fashion stores. We’ve shortlisted the edgiest boots from Office, the chicest peplum jacket from Ted Baker, and we’ve found this amazing winter-bloom, coordinating jacket and trouser suit from Matalan – we’ll be wearing it with chunky ankle boots, a polo-neck sweater and a statement necklace for the perfect transitional look. However, with a purse-friendly price tag of 42 – 42 for a suit! – it’s well and truly set to fly.

Take a look at our Online High-Street Hottest Gallery for the best autumn buys!

On Labor Day, chancing on a cluster of chokecherry trees on the path between Fort Lincoln and Bismarck, I paused to collect a couple of gallons of the puckery fruit. I had never done this before, but there the tree was, so heavy with chokecherries that it makes you shake your head in wonder at the sheer profusion of nature. My grandmother would never have passed by that tree without gathering the fruit, so to honor the coming of autumn I harvested about

20 percent of a single tree. It took much longer than I would have expected and I have a latticework of scratches all over my arms to show for it, and 40 puncture wounds in my hands.

When I got home, I decided to make chokecherry jam for the first time. It was 8:30 p.m. (A very very bad idea, this). By 1 a.m. I had 36 beautiful little jars of jam spread across my counters. I might have been proud of myself, had it not been for the three hours of cleaning and picking out spoiled berries and stems, and doing late-night pectin calculations, and watching the two big vats boil over several times in an instant all over my stove and the cupboard below and the floor, and the many misadventures of my makeshift sieves, and using inadequate tongs to pull the jars out of the boiling water.

And above all, seeing how vast a quantity of sugar is required to make chokecherries even minimally palatable. I could feel a root canal coming on as I poured a whole bag of sugar into one volcanic vat, just before it boiled over for the second time. Chokecherry jam, it turns out, is really just a syrup of chokecherry-colored sugar. It was a scene worthy of Ethel and Lucy in the candy factory. By the time I finished my kitchen was a scene of carnage and widespread berry stains, and I was a mere wreck of a man, wounded and burned in a range of ways, exhausted, more defeated than triumphant.

I swore never to take an autumn stroll again until the first big freeze. But I did love falling asleep while listening to the jars seal: pop ... thuck, pop, thut.