I find late October and November difficult - the change in the hour doesn't make the difference, it is the generally short length of day, the mess and the realisation that it will be at least 4 months before it warms up again. Every 10 years, it gets worse, with the lurking of a "significant" birthday. Twice we have managed to avoid that - but the holidays involved were expensive, and we didn't have as many cats!
Storms Ciaran and Domingos don't help either - I hate the way that strong winds bluster around the house and garden, howling and rattling and shaking. The amount of rain also makes visits to the chickens and just generally around the garden fraught with dangers of slipping on mud, and of getting wet if I don't time it right. So I look out for things to cheer me up.
This year, something that just keeps giving are the cyclamen, both the pink ones that have run away from gardens (or have been helped in their mission for world domination by mice and shrews) and the more delicate but wilder white ones. We have white ones in the One Acre Wood and each year there are more leaves, and now, with maturity, there are ever more places where one, two or a whole clump of flowers poke up between the fallen leaves. Later, I will drive myself mad counting all the sets of leaves that indicate where there are corms, but not just yet.
The garden escapees are bolder in colour, and stronger flowers. Between the Garden and the Orchard, there is a disused green lane, which is a haunt of boar and deer, and is gradually being taken over by false acacia. During the late spring, the hidden garden shrubs put on a fine display of flowers, but at this time of year, the lane is filled with pink cyclamen flowers, hiding among the ivy and detritus, and lifting my heart when I see them.
Today, the sky has been swept clean by Storm Domingo and underfoot is wet and squelchy, so gardening didn't appeal. Instead, armed with my phone and escorted by Monsieur Clause, I took a long ramble around the Meadow and Orchard. The phone has an app that is somewhat addictive, which identifies birdsong in real time. Standing in the sunshine at one edge of the Meadow, I was told I was listening to robins, chaffinch, great and long-tailed tits, a common firecrest and a Cetti's warbler. I also watched a small group of jackdaw mobbing a buzzard that had the temerity to be in the zone. The rain has refilled the ponds a bit, or the three I could look into anyway, the access to the fourth was too overgrown. I fear it is too late for my huge fish, but many other things enjoy the wetland. Walking back up the Orchard, I found some weird fungi - not as dramatic as Devil's Fingers which are black or red, but still ghostly and strangely disturbing.
The trail camera isn't behaving at the moment, so my only photo of wildlife this week is this huge, orange, flesh-eating, jelly slug. I had hoped to plant some tulip bulbs in that old WC cistern, but it might not be the best idea I have ever had, if that is what lives in it at the moment! I'll have to find a plan B.
The big news in the village is that someone has bought the lease of the pub and plans to open soon. No hint of when soon might be, and sadly they are changing the name of the pub too (I wonder if I could persuade them that is bad luck?), but it will be good to have something happening in the village during the next long, dark months of late autumn and winter. I'll keep you posted!
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