Songfacts®:

• English folk-pop singer Vashti Bunyan grew up in the city but spent many holidays visiting her grandmother's farm - just long enough to appreciate an idyllic country scene made up of hay bales, various animals, and a cozy kitchen that never failed to produce homemade bread and fresh-churned butter. She didn't understand the harsh reality of farm life until she embarked on the horse-and-cart journey that inspired her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day. "Rose Hip November" and "Swallow Song" were written in response to her loss of innocence.
  
  Bunyan and her boyfriend were making their way to the Isle of Skye when they met Mac and Iris MacFarlane, a couple who were also bound for Scotland. They offered their former home in northwest England's Lake District as a respite for the travelers during the chilly autumn months of 1968. During that time, Bunyan's childlike view of farm life was shattered when she learned about the methods of animal slaughter.
  
  "Everything seemed suddenly unbearably stolen," she wrote in her autobiography, Wayward: Just Another Life To Live. "Saddened and wised up to the brutality of it all I still ached for the long-gone, warm heart of Grandma Bunyan's farm kitchen, her stove and her bread. There I had not had a thought for the plight of the beasts outside, just a neat enjoyment of the butter she churned. Sitting on the window seat in Mac and Iris's house I made the ache into the words of the songs. The life, the innocence I longed for."
• Bunyan didn't intend to turn her travel songs into an album. She'd given up her recording career after her early singles didn't catch on and never wanted to set foot in a studio again, but producer Joe Boyd persuaded her to change her mind - temporarily. They recorded her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day, in the fall of 1969. When its 1970 release was largely ignored, it confirmed Bunyan's decision to leave music behind.
  
  She told the Songfacts Podcast in 2023: "I just lived my life. I had my kids and we lived an extraordinary life, but with no music in it whatsoever. I didn't even sing to my kids. Music was something that I'd thrown out of my life."
  
  Unbeknownst to the singer, her album started making waves in the alternative-folk community, inspiring artists like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsome, and was re-released to acclaim in 2000.
• The song title was inspired by Bunyan's walks to Hawkshead, an English village where she bought food while she stayed at the MacFarlanes' house. On her way back one November day, she noticed the hedgerows were full of rose hips, which are the seed pods of rose plants.
• Welsh fingerstyle guitarist John James performs on the track, but not with his typical instrument. He plays the dulcitone, a Scottish keyboard-style instrument that uses tuning forks in place of strings to produce sound. James went to art school with Robert Lewis, Bunyan's boyfriend and traveling companion, and is referenced in the song "Timothy Grub."
• Robin Williamson of The Incredible String Band plays the fiddle, whistle, and Irish harp on this track.
• Like much of Just Another Diamond Day, "Rose Hip November" is a product of Bunyan's introspective songwriting, capturing the melancholic beauty of the British countryside in late autumn.
  
  "It was when I was really grateful about being given a house to live in after being on the road and freezing cold," Bunyan told Uncut magazine. "I was also still quite romantic about farming life. 'Gold landing at our door...' When I was a child, if you were to catch an autumn leaf you would be lucky. So, 'catch one leaf and fortune will surround you ever more.'"
• The story behind the album and Bunyan's journey is explored in the documentary Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before (2008).