The Week on the Threshold of Winter

This pottery witch was made a long time ago by my youngest daughter, so it's just right to start a post on Hallowe'en!

My grand-daughter and I made this lantern yesterday. I know it was a small cultivar - wee be little - but this is ridiculous. It's a testament to how poor the summer has been. On the other hand, said grand-daughter took it into school today and everyone thought it was 'so cute'. One of the mothers said she was going to go to Tesco to see if she could buy a small one like that, and I didn't have the heart to tell her!

Other things like the wet. There's nothing wrong with the kale:

or the cabbages and the chillis don't seem to mind it either.

But this is the reality of this week. In the wind last Thursday there was a sudden rattling on the roof as leaves in their thousands left the trees. I can see the railway line through the trees, and even as far as the windfarm on Sherriffmuir from my window. The world is opening out as if the orchard had drawn back a curtain. For all the shorter days, winter here is the time of vision.

The Week that Kindled Autumn

Abbey Craig

High on the grey rock
autumn lights a burning torch
oak among alders.

It's like watching a slow fire from my window. The beeches are turning coppery, the birch yellow, the maples red and the sycamores every shade of flame from sepia to bronze. Bringing Lucy home from school is complicated by leaf scuffling and walks 'in the forest' - the avenues of lime and cherry trees that were planted on the river bank only thirty-five years ago, but which have always been part of my acquaintance with the territory of rain.

On Sunday we went further afield, to Aberfoyle, where we saw this amazing stagshorn fungus. We go there often, and I've written three poems about it, for spring, summer and autumn.

Naming the Autumn

A mite in the hills' green folds,
I walk, naming the autumn –
coal tit, oakmoss, bracket fungus.
I mark the whiskered outgrowths
of blaeberries and whin, and hollows
where primroses will flavour spring
with sunlight and honey. I know
which woods are good for burning
and where the Highland fault line cuts
the ancient metamorphic rock
from fertile sandstones in the south.
A net of sweeping birch twigs sifts
the wind, and catches strands of lichen,
ice-green and hairy. Taxonomy
fails me. I cannot bring to mind
its name, or whether it’s the sort
I need to make a winter pot-pourri.
No matter. The art of knowing
is knowing when to let things be.

Now I feel I should do one for winter!I can't say I like it so much since they put in the zipline, but it's hard to grudge people an experience that they obviously enjoy so much.

One new thing I do like, however, is the wildlife hide, where we saw this irresistibly cute resident.

I am glad to know that the squirrel and bird populations are going to be supported this year, because I've been shocked to see how few berries and acorns there are. Last year, I know, was a 'mast year' when trees bear heavily, so I expected a certain falling off, but the weather has been so poor that wildlife is going to struggle if we don't help. The good people at the Loch of the Lowes were only saying yesterday how many underweight hedgehogs they've seen, so the plan Lucy and I have made for a hedgehog house looks very timely!

Can I just give a last call for submissions fro the Stravaig magazine? We'd like artwork or filmclips as well as poetry or essays if anyone has them, on the theme of 'coast to coast'. Submissions to burnedthumb@gmail.com, please, by 1st November.

The Week of the Wild Geese

This is pretty much the view from my window just now.It's grey and wet and the sky is heavy with featureless cloud. The leaves are turning, thanks to all the frosty nights and clear bright days we had last week and the last apples, too high to pick, are like copper buttons on the trees in the orchard. But the most significant event in the territory of rain is one I can't photograph.

Morning and evening, every day for the last week, hundreds of geese have passed over heading west and a little north,(mostly right to left as you're looking at that photo),towards the fields of the Carse of Stirling and Flanders Moss. They are mostly pink-footed geese, as you can tell from their cry ('pinks wink' as the saying goes), but there are also some greylags (greys honk), and once a skein of whooper swans strung out along the shoulder of Dumyat like a silver necklace. Some fly high and look like those m-shaped scribbles children use to draw sea-gulls. Some fly low and the sun catches on their wings and turns them to silver and black. But the noise is incredible, a peal of bells, a playground of rowdy children, a pack of hounds in full cry.

It's no wonder that stories grew up around the flight of the geese. You can hear them at night too, when it isn't just loud, it's as eerie as those vixen cries or screech owl calls they use on television programmes to indicate the isolation and terror of the countryside. People believed that it was the 'Wild Hunt' or the 'Gabriel Hounds' hunting for lost souls, or the souls of those about to die in the coming winter, and I'm not surprised. I love it. As human life retreats indoors to firelight and storecupboard cooking, it's good to hear the clamour from outside and remember that the winter landscape hasn't been abandoned to the wind and frost.

The Week of the Indian Summer

For the last few days, the nights have been cold and frosty, and the days bright, clear and warm. The work on the roof has gone without a hitch, and it should be finished today. It's been lovely. The flowers are doing their final fling.

The leaves are turning. We haven't had too many blueberries, and what there was, the blackbirds will surely steal, but what we get is this fantastic colour.

I'm really thrilled with this, however. The wet summer has provided me with the ideal conditions for this cranberry - well, bog, to be honest!

And this is what I got this morning! Not much, I admit, but maybe next year---

The week We Cleared the Pond

This year, the pond mostly looked like this -

a bit flowery, but mostly overgrown, and frankly out of control. So last week we spent a whole morning clearing, dividing and repotting. And now it looks like this -

The inhabitants were very surprised.

There was a bit of an autumn clean-up going on in other places. It's one of my principles not to be too tidy - yes, folks, the nettles, tansy, alkanet and teasels are there FOR A REASON, dammit - but if I wanted to put in some crocuses under the witch hazel or to see the wild daffodils I planted last year come spring, or even to get to the bird feeder over the winter, something had to be done.

And I weeded the fruit patch. I think this bed will be quite productive this year.

On the poetry front, if anyone is thinking of going to the Reading for Rights event organised by FREA in Irvine next month, there is a poster up on the Burnedthumb website. I'll be reading just before the interval.