The season of apples and autumnal blossom
Monday 8 November
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We walk to the soundtrack of clucking pheasants. The girls are on high alert, a spring in their step. We come over the little bridge and stumble across a deer. It outruns Morag quickly and we all watch as it hops effortlessly over the hedge into the wooded flank of Pickeridge Hill. The dusk is falling and the hoot of the Corfe owl echoes softly. There are leaves tumbling from the ash trees along the path and the moment is so perfect that I put my arms out to catch some.
It is at this point I realise I have dropped Hugo’s lead and I have to do the whole walk again, backwards and with a torch.
Tuesday 9 November
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Dahlias. Are you lifting or not lifting? I am half and half, not through any lack of conviction but because it is time to move the last remaining dahlias out of the Dye garden. I used the excuse that yellow dahlias with a touch of iron make the most perfect mossy green but that doesn’t explain why the little patch fenced with chestnut paling is also home to five café au laits and all of my favourite bronze balls. I have been looking forward to the slow season to do more dyeing and this utterly wonderful picture by Toni Lötter of Dye Path Project made me realise that I had the seed for many more dye plants than I actually grew this year. And so I am going to be even more generous with the time and space I offer them next year.
Toni Lötter very kindly gave me permission to share her picture with you. It is a gift for a friend of hers and I cannot think of anything more beautiful. (My dye seed bundles will be available in the Gather Christmas shop, but I can't promise they will all be hand-written…)
Wednesday 10 August
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I was idly telling someone the story about how I forbade our local vicar to marry me and my husband because of his chronic chaotic admin. We nearly didn’t get married at all because the vicar forgot to read the banns and he sent me numerous emails to arrange the service with the wrong name and date on. She said it sounded like the Vicar of Dibley.
Village life, once you scratch the surface, is exactly like the Vicar of Dibley. I forget to go to the village quiz tonight. This will have been noted and will be brought up at every parish council meeting by the village elders for the foreseeable. You’d think that being an active citizen gives you a free pass to not attend such things; I feel like I am already doing my bit by trying to get the village a community polytunnel. Apparently, it doesn’t work like that. There are ‘expectations’.
On the upside (and there is always an upside to villages), fellow councillor and pillar of the community Mr L has been and done the native hedge. It missed a year last year and its growth had taken it beyond anything a human could have tamed with a ladder and a hedge trimmer.
Thursday 11 November
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Remembrance Day. I drop a box of seeds off to Naomi at Collate in Axminster and there are people everywhere preparing for the minute’s silence. I time it so that the eleven o’clock falls as I am on the beautiful, quiet landscape of the Stockland Road. There is a lorry skewed across the road with its hazards on. I think the driver is observing the minute's silence but it turns out he is taking photographs on his phone leaning out of his cab window. The view of the sweeping hills where Dorset, Devon and Somerset meet is glorious and glowing from my viewpoint. Heaven knows how spectacular it must be from his height.
Friday 12 November
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Tell me you’re in the tricky season of cutting down on food miles without telling me you’re in the tricky season of cutting down on food miles.
Every meal is designed around chard.
I can highly recommend Anna Jones’ chard, bay and lentil gratin. Since I discovered it a month ago, I have cooked little else. Stir a bit of dried pasta in before you bake and it really is a complete meal. Works just as well with coconut cream if you are vegan.
Saturday 13 November
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Another thing I have been doing a lot of is drying apple slices. Unbelievably simple if you buy one of those clever coring machines from Lakeland and terribly satisfying.
Because I know someone will ask, bottom oven/110 degrees for about three hours. Put on parchment paper rather than the shelf and make sure you turn a few times so they are even. They take longer if you leave the skins on but they’ll feel healthier.
Sunday 14 November
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The trees. This week, go for a walk. Go for a drive. Go and stand under some trees and look upwards. Bask in the golden glory that is autumn expressed through the medium of beech.
Also, my autumn flowering cherry has burst into bloom. It is a tree of great cheer in these short November days.
