Finally. After weeks of middling sort of coat/no coat weather, damp, dog-washing, muddy but mild weather, there was a frost. A proper hard frost. This is unusual for my little bit of Somerset, we escape the worst of the weather generally. The dogs scuffle around at smells that are sharpened by the cold. Hugo sings to go back into the warm. (I adore the sound of a spaniel singing, it is one of my favourite things ever. The shouty barking at the postman and every passing dog, much less so.) I know, I have managed to trim his ears but none of the rest of him. Trimming a spaniel with scissors has much in common with painting the Forth Bridge. But it felt like winter had properly, finally arrived. And you know what winter means? It means ribbons and parcels and wreaths and mulled cider and log deliveries and wondering whether it is ok to buy oneself a scented candle along with the cheese box from Piper's Farm. (Did you hear On Our Farm this morning about a couple who foster orchards and make cider from them? I absolutely put some of their stuff in my Christmas order.)

Monday 23rd November. The field is starting to look decidedly tatty. The little jobs are starting to build up and I rail against the short days. I am a great believer in leaving as much cover and food for the birds and wildlife as possible, but the mild weather means that a carpet of nettles is creeping across the field. I thought they would be good for dyeing but I think I left it too late in the year, and the promised deep forest green was never delivered. I will try again in the spring when the chemistry of the growth is different, but I will forage from the wild then. These ones here will have to go.

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Tuesday 24th November. We venture for the first time into the fields the other side of the stream. It is an area well avoided during the pheasant season as even my immaculately trained dogs, being gundogs in heritage if not in inclination, find them utterly irresistible. I am so fed up of the mud in Far Corfe (a joke once made at a village hall quiz about where a heckler was from, and it still makes me laugh. Say it out loud if you don't get it) that we risk it anyway. The grass is long and smooth. There is lichen on the trees. The owl is closer here. I have missed it. 

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Wednesday 25th November. A day packing orders. Three trips to the post office and my mother asks if I have considered getting a courier to collect. I can't help thinking this would be sensible but I would miss my local post office. David always asks me if I have enough stamps and, if the load is particularly big, he puts it through as cash and lets me pay later when he's ploughed through it all. I found out at the beginning of lockdown that no one who works in that post office should have carried on working because they are all over 75. Some of them really well over. The fact that they spend all day on their feet serving people like me I think merits loyalty and gratitude. Also, they are an excellent source of gossip. 

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Thursday 26th November. The first frost. I am trying to find my candlesticks to prepare for the weekend's photography. They are almost always wherever it was that we last had a party. (I am not one of those people that tidies up before they go to bed.) It has been a long time since anyone had a party and I find them frozen to the long trestle table in the orchard.

Friday 27th November. Another frost, although it feels milder. My dahlias, so generous with the dyeing project, appear to have survived intact. I haven't even cut them down yet as there is the odd flower still coming and they really do give the most delicious gold colour. By the time it has thawed, I wonder if I have dreamed it all as nothing seems to have been touched. The nasturtiums continue their excursion into next door's yard. I can't tell if the Pennisetum villosum (the grass that looks like caterpillars) has been got because Hugo chews at it every morning and it already looks quite sorry for itself. 

Saturday 28th November. And after the frost came the fog. It is utterly glorious and magical and incredible and, you know what, it just smooths out the edges of the world. I drive to Radstock to collect one of the few things I have ever had professionally printed and go weak at the knees at their printing press. I have to wait for the job to be finished and I am put in an office with heater and brought coffee. I cannot quite work out why I am being treated like a star until one of the printers sidles in and tells me he bought a box of my seeds for his mum for Mothering Sunday last year. I feel like, in this tiny corner of the world, I've made it.

Sunday 29th November. I start with carols before breakfast. I am still going. If you have ordered from me today, I am touched and I am never-endingly grateful for all your love and support, thank you so much. I will be outside the post office when it opens tomorrow.