The wall is not going to win prizes for its brickwork, but the cracks and crevices provide shelter for many creatures including a trapdoor spider. It’s probably hibernating a few centimetres back from the doorway.
The autumn rains swelled the river which runs left to right behind the iron fence in this picture. The water wasn’t deep enough to close the park but there were near-perfect reflections of the bench and bushes on this windless morning, earlier this week.
We have a neighbour who feeds the pigeons (and indirectly the sparrowhawk). This morning the pigeons were not ranging the snow-covered fields, but gathered in the lime tree, keeping company, conserving energy, and waiting for the grain to be scattered in our neighbour’s garden.
We had gone up North, despite the railway strikes, for an important family funeral. But thanks to the railway strikes, we travelled early and had time for a few reflective walks. The restored Huddersfield Narrow Canal is easy, dry-shod walking; we found warm accommodation in Greenfield village. On a day of showers and sunshine we turned a corner to witness this autumn scene: a watery sun shining through the golden leaves of the beech, the hedge behind it still hardly changed. Can spring be far behind?
This world belongs to the gulls, waders, ducks and herons, and perhaps to the birdwatchers and the wader-shod man who disappeared into the wreck with his spaniel.
There is a neighbour who feeds the birds and attracts plenty of them to her front garden. This particular morning I had walked a little way past her house when I saw a young sparrowhawk with a collared dove it had just killed. It almost ignored me as I walked in the carriageway and took photos (which included a car mirror).
As I moved a little closer the hawk hopped into the hedge bottom with its prey. My scaring it actually did it a favour because the magpie would surely have stabbed with its pointed bill and maybe have stolen a meal. Let’s hope the hawk learns to be more wary and more skilful and survives the coming winter.
Autumn is spider time as well as bird time! This one has set up home just outside our kitchen window and is doing its best to control the fly population.
For a few weeks the birds in evidence in town have been jackdaws and other crows, gulls, including one that could not find its way out of St Thomas’ church, and members of the pigeon family. They do things their own way: last week I saw a half eggshell of a wood pigeon, but a town pigeon landed just in front of my bike to retrieve a lost stick needed for nest building on the old post office.
Precious little sight or sound of the song birds until this week. We were sitting under the trees at the Glebe when two robins began to sing quietly to each other just above our heads. Surely a couple. Then a happy surprise when our 4 year old blackbird reappeared. You may just distinguish his identifying white spots.
Happy Autumn!
When Mrs T had decided the old lilac tree had to go, it went to keep us warm, thanks to the woodburner. In to replace it came a crab apple called John Downie. A welcome addition to the garden and much friendlier to its neighbours than the lilac, which hogged all the surface water and the light. Maybe we can, at last, grow hellebores here. Whether or not that happens, this is John Downie’s Spring moment!
Come the Autumn and those little branches will be full of deep red apples which make a well-coloured jelly.
My friend Thomas sent an email to say, ‘We are not failures’ if our New Year Resolutions have not borne the fruit we’d hoped for. So be good to yourself: ‘if only for a moment, let yourself be at home with yourself’.’
One place I am at home with myself is the kitchen. The school Thomas and I attended expected us to master basic cooking, but many of the lads can do better than basic. My January therapeutic special activity is making marmalade. Not much foraging to this one but come Autumn we can make October marmalade using citrus peel, sugar and windfall or crab apples, which supply the pectin that helps the preserve to set.
January the set depends on long boiling and added pectin, using most of the stored jars from under the stairs. That’s our label up above. Friends and relations look out!
Will Turnstone 