Autumn announces itself subtly. It started with one conker falling beside me as I fed the hens at the yard. Just one: a symbol of childhood glee at trips to collect conkers, cure them and then play, my dad enjoying it just as much as I did.
Now the road to the yard is festooned with conkers, and I am reminded of the Parable of the Sower every day, feeling particularly sorry for those that fall on the road. They have no hope of anything except being squashed by a vehicle. I pick up as many as I can and throw them into the hedgerow, where I trust that some of them will grow.
Sweet chestnuts are also in abundance, their spiky lime-green shells carpeting one part of the paddock.
So, it’s a good year to be a squirrel, and as I walk to the yard, and wander about with barrows of horse manure, they bound about gleefully. It is an excellent harvest for them. They will eat now, and hopefully right through the winter.
The abundance speaks of a stressful summer: trees eager to pass their DNA on, just in case they don’t make it. But they are strong, mature trees and I am hopeful.
Now, their leaves hint at the move into autumn too. A distant acer’s leaves burn bright red. Everywhere there are hints of yellow among the abundant green.
And, though it is still often warm in the day, there is heavy dew on the ground in the mornings. I am layering up, wearing boots, jeans and ancient riding gloves.
The days are shortening. It is light when I walk to the yard, but, when I put my own hens to bed, the sky is pink, and the first owls are calling.
Seeing, feeling and being aware of this change is vital for me. I think of the decades spent leaving and returning to the house in the dark, with no sense of what the weather had been like, or what was happening in the natural world. I think of it with horror.
Walking means I know that we are on the cusp of change and have time to accept it, to travel with it, and be reconciled to the idea that summer doesn’t last forever.