Sunday 21 October 2018

Sunday 21.10.2018

Yesterday was tranquil and warm and still, a day to take in the best that autumn has to offer, it felt like a finale.

And in a way so it proved. Today was much cooler and windier, lively skies with occasional bracing squalls bringing down more leaves which we scuffed through with happy abandon this afternoon.










Before we ventured out, finished The Restless Girls by Jessie Burton. Retold fairy tales can be a bit stilted sometimes: not this one - a tour de force and beautifully illustrated by Angela Barrett.

Tuesday 16 October 2018

Tuesday 16.10.2018

Fresh rather than murderous wind this morning, moving the low grey clouds along apace, occasionally revealing a slash of blue higher up.
In the woods - full on autumn......



...........complete with giddy flocks of chittery chattery birds flitting in and out of the trees - birds that clearly knew I`d left my binoculars at home - redwings? Probably. And we were escorted down the road by an equally excitable collection of chaffinches and yellowhammers, flitting from fence top to telephone wire, then swooping low across the stubble fields.

Yesterday on the top hill was another of those preternaturally still evenings,as if we`d ground to a halt and were just hanging, waiting. Impossible to grasp we were still spinning at nearly 1000 miles an hour while simultaneously hurtling around the sun at about 67,000.
A little easier to remember today.

Sunday 14 October 2018

Sunday 14.10.2018

Storm Callum has been and gone and tonight you could hear a pin, or a leaf, drop.
Plenty of leaves had hung on, despite Callum`s fury and the evening light illuminated them,






while on the top of the hill, with the temperature plummeting and a crescent moon hanging in an ice blue sky, the colour intensified.











Fortuitously, when the stormy weather first arrived, the wind that we leaned into on the way up the road and which buffeted us around on the way back down was surprisingly warm. If it hadn`t been it would have required Everest-climbing gear.
It was the kind of weather you could almost have a conversation with as it tried to knock you off your feet: in the end joyous enough to make you laugh.
It was shirt-sleeves order in the woods where the sheltered trees hardly moved and despite the threat of rain it was yet another beautiful autumn day.








Then the deluge did arrive though for us"fools on the hill" thankfully no flooding and no sooner had it drenched the world than it moved on and we were left with another light show.






Meanwhile back at the ranch.......

....apple chutney, apple jelly, stewed apple, cider vinegar.......

Monday 8 October 2018

Monday 8.10.2018

Do birds have different calls depending on the season? A grey, still morning and the birdsong in the woods sounded plaintiff, the crow-caw warning of impending winter. Maybe a bit too much pathetic fallacy. Or maybe not:
"Songs - that are used to attract mates and defend territories.
Calls - that are used to give alarm, maintain contact within a flock, beg for food, etc."
(
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/information/song.html)

The sounds of geese overhead, and the sight, definitely signifies autumn

as does the squawk of the pheasants, ubiquitous now, scattered by Dog 2 (who seems able to smell them from a mile off), usually the male first all flashy colours and long tail with the brown female not far behind. They know she can`t catch them (they can fly!) and she knows it too but it`s a game they all seem to enjoy.

The weather fronts so beloved by meteorologists continue to chase each other across the country while the jet-stream curves this way and that, all of which results in the best feature of British weather, especially at this time of year - its changeability: in the morning nose-biting, still air and frost segueing into mild and blustery by the afternoon with apples tumbling off the trees and that rich scent of earth. Autumn - love it.
On a bare branch
A crow is perched -
Autumn evening”

― Bashō


Wednesday 3 October 2018

Wednesday 3.10.2018

Yesterday was such a wonderfully wild day: strong,cold, blustery, gustery (?) wind all day but bright and sunny. We leaned into it on the way up the road, the metal gates clattering and emitting their mournful wail ("winter`s not far awaaaaaay"),the telephone wires joining in the chorus and the starlings wheeling and diving and swooping, obviously having the time of their lives (not to anthropomorphise of course.)

But in the woods it was all about the trees, swooshing about up high, creaking and groaning as the wind buffeted them and just beginning to put on their autumn colours.




Today a much wetter, gloomier, quieter day: less inviting but no less autumnal.
A book reading day in fact and everyone, everyone, should read this gem: picked it up on a whim in the library despite having an already overloaded TBR pile and read it in the space of 36 hours because couldn`t put it down. Poignant, inspiring, warm and funny.....and her picture makes her look like somebody you would like to know. :)