In the autumn of my days

The swallows have gone but the warm sunny days belie the presence of Autumn.  An Indian summer...why an Indian summer?    Apparently, it  came into use when the first colonists on North America noted these warm periods in autumn were essential to the native Americans for gathering their harvest and stores in preparation for their harsh winters.
 It is probably no longer politically correct to use the expression and we can't call the phenomenon a "Native or Pre-Columbian American Summer".  Perhaps we should go back to  St Martin's summer or St Luke's summer, so-called because of the feast days of these saints.   In some countries they call it an "old ladies" summer.
Whatever the name, it has been so enjoyable to get out and roam the countryside.  The grain harvest is past and the potatoes are being lifted. The days of the tattie howkers are long gone though a few still refer to the October school holiday as  " the tattie holidays", remembering a time when the back breaking toil of  picking up the crop by hand was a source of revenue for school-children. Now a machine does it all, its great curved tail depositing the earthy haul into the waiting trailer like a giant insect laying eggs.

The hedgerows are laden with fruit though how much will survive the slashing of the mechanised cutters is a concern for those of us interested in the survival of our bird life.
Why cut the hedges now?

A walk out to the Duddo stones raised the spirits. Set on an insignificant hillock, because of the surrounding topography, they command superb views of the surrounding country and distant hills.   They have stood for more than four thousand autumns, a tribute to the belief system that compelled the Neolithic farmers to erect them.  They give a perspective to our short lived concerns.

Duddo stone circle sometimes called the Singing Stones

The weathered face of the largest stone

A little further on the road was a small nature reserve.   A lowland moss formed at the end of the Ice Age, it had been the site of coal mining for three centuries.  Now Nature is reclaiming it.    The remains of the mine works look incongruous in the landscape and the workings themselves are all but gone.

The old mine workings on the Ford Moss

Nature seems to surmount all we can do to it … up until now, at least.
   
John Clare got it right.  Children plucked daisies long before the Duddo Stones were stood on end and children will probably pluck daisies thousands of years from now but the daisy will still be the same.   
“..A music that lives on and ever lives” *
Yet the landscape that the Neolithic farmers knew and  or that of John Clare, would have been vastly different from what we see today. For more than five thousand years we have been managing and shaping it.  Even the five Duddo Stones were once seven, two being removed to let the  plough come closer.
 Thousands of years of belief  exchanged for a few ears of grain. 
They are still  one of the most dramatic and impressive sites, especially on a beautiful, autumnal day with the blue shapes of the Cheviots, the Eildons and the edge of the Lammermuirs on the encircling horizon.

*  The Eternity of Nature    John Clare

Summer's lease has still to run

Autumn is officially here, the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness“.  Keats has got it right this year. The apple and  plum trees are hanging with fruit and the brambles, a taste of childhood, are fat and juicy.

The autumn crocuses and cyclamen are in flower under the cherry tree.
Yet, the swallows remain, flying their sorties over the stubble fields, rough shaven by the combines.   As long as they stay there is just a trace of summer to enjoy.  Suddenly they will be gone, one day swooping up to twitter in ranks on the telephone wires, the next, gone …every one…each obeying their own inner calendar yet leaving en masse and bringing the dark days of winter that bit closer.
Still the sun still shines and the winds, though northerly, are not too chill.

The pastures up on the moor are pink with sheep sorrel and the fungi are making their showy appearance in the woods. Winter is a long way off.

A bumble bee.. I think,a buff-tailed bumble bee …was hovering over a patch of grass and whins... then crawling about in the grass as if searching.   I wondered if it was a queen looking for a mouse hole or similar to make a nest for the winter.   It didn’t find any place that suited  it and flew off.  Even with  bumble bees, location, location, location… is everything.

The butterflies have been feasting on the rotting windfall apples...mostly peacocks which we seem to be seeing more and more often.   Presumably they too are stocking up on supplies before hibernation.   LotH bred a lot of Painted Lady butterflies in a lepidopterum, if that’s the word, last year and has been disappointed not to see any in the garden this year but I don’t think butterflies are like swallows or salmon… returning to their birthplace to breed.  They are a  truly beautiful excuse for not weeding.  Any remarks about the nettles in the borders are fended off with the retort that they are there for the butterflies!

 This handsome gentleman is still wearing his russet summer coat, though he seems haughtily suspicious of strangers

 "And stared at me. And so for some lasting seconds
I could think the deer were waiting for me
To remember the password and sign"       *

*Ted Hughes   The Roe Deer