The fruit starts to fall
Monday 15 August
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All day, I waited for rain. I watch the sky and smell the air. At tea time, as I lean on the cooker, I hear it come. A dry rattle. But as I look out of the window, it is not rain. It is a shower of dried, yellow leaves. A last letting-go of the lime trees that line the road at the front of the cottages, a herald of what is yet to come.
And then, a few minutes later, the thunder comes. And then a few minutes after that, the rain. It hammers into the courtyard and drips off the thatch.
Tuesday 16 August
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Rain seems so precious now. After all this time, I cannot bear to watch it just run away. Thatched rooves don’t have gutters so the only way to catch the water is to put trugs where the drips are the heaviest. They fill up in hours and the road past the racecourse becomes a puddle and I can only hope it is enough to save my amelanchiers.
And then, as suddenly as it came, it stops.
Wednesday 17 August
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The field has taken on tones of green and an air of relief. Even the dahlias, which I have been watering, burst into flower. I was rude about the Café au Lait’s in last week’s newsletter and they prove me wrong by sending out particularly twirly, textured flowers.
Thursday 18 August
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I declare an afternoon off from website work and promise myself some time with the soil. I pull on boots and head out, without much of an agenda except to do anything that doesn’t involve a computer. I find myself turning the compost heap, a job that, once started, cannot be stopped. One bay for maturing the done compost ready for late autumn top dressing, the middle is layered with greens and browns and watered to get up to temperature, the last bay for fresh chippings and weeds. It wasn’t a job that I did because it needed doing; I did it because it was a job I needed to do. I feel alive and satisfied and grounded all at once. I did also complain about how sore my muscles were though.
Friday 19 August
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The first crab apples and the first blackberries. I test both tentatively. This weather has brought on a false autumn, where fruit is being dropped because of the sense that the trees might not survive and any offspring is better than no offspring. The test for a ripe apple is that it come free in your hand as soon as you lift it; our James Grieve apples come away in my hand and they are strewn across the path, but they are not yet ripe. The first crab apples have reached that perfect stage though. Patches of red blushing across a glossy yellow fruit.
Re: the crab apples. I feared that crab apple jelly was the only use for them, but I have discovered a crab apple liqueur recipe which will, fortuitously, be ready just in time for Christmas. Make as sloe gin, but with vodka.
Saturday 20 August
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From now until November, I will drive the top road whenever I can. It is a road cut through the tallest of beeches, as if through a tunnel. The sides are studded with huge, ancient trunks, and the branches get up and up and across to form the most perfect vaulted ceiling, as if in a cathedral. It is utterly magical at any time of year, but especially so as the colours change. Sadly, it seems as if the false autumn has struck some of the smaller trees and rather than a softening of green, some of the trees look crispy and brown. Like with my amelanchiers, I can only hope that the rain has not come too late for them.
Sunday 21 August
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We wake to more rain. I have started to think about ordering firewood for the winter, and collecting teasels for autumn wreaths. It doesn’t last long and the sun is soon shining. Perfect growing weather, and I find that three courgettes have appeared overnight. All the sweet peas were overwhelmed by the drought except Indigo King. I have never seen a sweet pea look so ebullient.
