Week 37
The September garden; not-quite-dawn walks; autumn leaf race
Hello! Well the mini British heatwave has broken and we can all sleep again, and more importantly we can settle into our Septemberness, and not be distracted from our new projects and pencil sharpening by lying around fanning ourselves and drinking mint juleps.
Thank you so much to those of you who responded to my plea to leave Amazon reviews for my new book, The Almanac 2024! It means a HUGE amount to me and it’s not just vanity - for all its many faults it is the place that lots of people, independent bookshops included, look to see how a book is being received, and so I am so grateful. But I need more! Please do consider leaving one if you have a copy…
Now to business. This is my weekly post in which I talk about three seasonal things I have noticed this week, and then you tell me yours, by clicking on the ‘comments’ button at the bottom of this post. Everyone can join in, you don’t have to be a paid subscriber, and we really welcome contributions from around the world, not just my particular corner of it. We love to get a sense of the changing seasons all over the world, both minute and grand, and feel the magic and awe of the different things happening all over the planet at once.
We begin with a round up of your comments from last week. Here’s your Week 36:
A cold sea swim followed by fish and chips
The local cake shop already fully decorated for Halloween
Hummingbirds (US) especially active and any day now could be the last day for our feathered friends before flying south for the winter. Trying to notice the lasts, which are harder to catch than the firsts
Brown September spiders taking over the garden, with webs across the path, making it impossible to pick blackberries without disturbing them
Bright orange berries on the rowan trees
Rainy season in Vietnam - rain in great hot waves. Lychee are in season so drinking ice lychee tea at street bars in Saigon, set against a roaring backdrop of motorbikes
Apples dropping everywhere, the wasps at them faster than we can pick them
Making raspberry vodka and looking out at a beautiful pale blue sky, as the light starts to fall
Dark at 8.00 pm but still hot enough to sit outside in the twilight with bats flitting around
Just surrendering to the garden now, and embracing its dishevelledness
Crunching through the first fallen leaves on the way to school and eating ice creams on the way home
Bare arms in the bizarre September hot yet dark evenings
A gentle, second flush of roses
Woken every morning by geese flying to the river
Mist hanging low in the mornings
Hydrangeas starting to tinge and rust at the edges, and tall grasses with their first florets, a beautiful combination of fading and fullness
Damsons at the local greengrocers
Watching the birds gather on the wires
Grapes in the garden ripening, sweet and grapey in a way no grocery store grape can ever aspire to
The smell of the winter cordial as it simmers away in the jam pan
Watching the house martins swoop and dance in the evening skies
And just the one from the southern hemisphere this week, from Australia:
Lace Monitors out and about, a sure sign that the weather is warming up. Big storms but alas no rain. Raucous cockatoos giving the crows and kookaburras a run for their money.
Magical, thank you.
Here’s my Week 37:
The September garden
I thought I would give you a glimpse of the sight that greets me when I step out of the kitchen door right now, because it doesn’t get much lusher and fuller than this. All of the houseplants have been out for the summer, and I was lounging out here among their junglyness sipping cold wine in the heat just a few days ago. But I think they will come back indoors this week - there’s suddenly that little hint of a chill in the air and I don’t want to push it. Their summer holiday has done them a lot of good though. They came out dusty and light-starved, and they go back in shining and green.
Not-quite-dawn walks
This week I made a decision to start going for my morning walk a bit earlier, more for life scheduling reasons than anything more poetic. But on my first day of it it was clear the sun had not long come up. And dawn will get later and later and soon I will have to walk later too. Bah. Pesky seasons…
Autumn leaf race
One thing I love about walking the dogs every day in autumn is that you almost spot each leaf turning colour. I am always interested in the order of the leaf change. Which ones go first? Which ones hang on until last? And do they do this in different orders in different places? I thought this could be a game we could all play together. So: in my neck of the woods there are just a few leaves turning colour on: field maples, limes, and birch trees. Yours?
That’s it from me.
Here are some links to buy The Almanac 2024 and here is the link to leave an Amazon review if you would like to help me out. Pretty please. Hugely appreciated, thank you x
And please leave your comments below. What have you noticed this week that feels particularly ‘this week’? What have you eaten/seen/worn/sniffed that marks out this moment in the year? I can’t wait to hear.
Cherry and artichoke oak galls, a great delight found on a runty little oak growing on the site of an old arsenic works. I check this tree several times a year as it never fails to deliver interesting galls!
We are back in West Sussex having “ flown south” earlier this week - and it feels so different here! So much warmer and sunnier - and later dusk, so it’s confusing my seasonal senses a bit! Plus, we are off to the Dordogne region of France with family for a week tomorrow, so I’ll be even more confused! Anyway - what I’ve noticed ! The leaves turning brown and dropping off the gorgeous cherry tree out in our courtyard / boule pitch front garden......as Anne says, how calm and peaceful it all feels here, with shorn fields, beaches emptier and everywhere quieter now school is back .....and how verdant and still blooming the back garden is here, roses especially having a final flourish. We also brought several trugs full of apples and green tomatoes back from Northumberland so they are set at the front door in full sun, slowly ripening and will be gradually used ....I was t going to waste them!