We have not yet had a frost. The air has been wet and warm. Often, the rain has been depressingly heavy, making the mud sticky and the dogs gritty.

Flowers out at this time of year generally fall in two camps. Firstly, the accidentally persistent. Summer flowers that just keep going, or suddenly bloom once more when the day length mirrors that of the most powerful bit of spring. I have a sweet rocket glowing unexpectedly in the field and it makes me smile whenever I see it.

 The others are true end of season flowers. Happiest as the autumn hangs heavy and there is a nip in the air. I have grown Selinum wallichianum for the first time as a late, perennial alternative to ammi majus and it is gorgeous. Robust flowers and reddened stems that glow in the low light that comes over the hill.

I thought this was a wonderful year for late flowers. I am still cutting sweet peas and there are nasturtiums in the kale beds putting out the odd bloom. Pops of electric blue chicory appear in the perennial beds. There is a little row of Nicotiana ‘Tinkerbelle’ in a low trough in the courtyard which has survived being wagged against by dog tails twice a day. I photographed the last dahlia that is intact.

But looking back at last year’s entry for November, there were roses. There were twirly café au laits and I was still cutting buckets and buckets of dahlias, not just the odd one or two. Verbascum and late sunflowers. There were so many things.

This year feels different. A little wrong somehow. I crave a really cold night. Something to shift the colours in the trees. The leaves are hanging on in a limp and slightly resigned manner and only a hard frost will bring them down. I have a more pragmatic reason for wishing for an end to this warm and wet; every single Wisley Cream clematis bloom has been devoured by slugs and every viola flower has a hole in it.

I keep myself warm by building compost cakes of old thatch and moving wood chip. But, like the field, I am running out of steam. It is time for rest and hibernation. Time for the worms to do their work and to dream of spring.