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