After lots of time to think and write on holiday, it was back to Earth and work with a bump on our return from Tunisia, so I’m cheating a bit and running together my nature noticing for the last couple of weeks. It feels like autumn arrived whilst we were away, with the leaves starting to change colour, berries ripening and the nights drawing in. We’ve had lots of rain and I’ve been too busy at work to get much time outdoors, even when the weather has been better, but I’ve enjoyed cycling to work again and some beautiful outings on the river with a Kingfisher darting past us on a couple of occasions. There has also been time for a walk in High Wood and to visit the Botanic Gardens, of course, partly under the guise of work as we prepare to start off a new cohort of student volunteers.

My only real ‘day out’ in nature was a good one, though. Gill and I headed south along the coast from Crimdon on a beautiful day, warm enough for the grasshoppers in the dunes to be leaping out from under our feet as we walked, with a few late Peacock and Speckled Wood butterflies nectaring on the Brambles and Wall Rocket. A second flush of Bloody Cranesbill was impossible to ignore and there were Stonechats in the dunes and Little Terns and Oystercatchers amongst the gulls on the beach. A Grand Day Out!

In the allotment I’ve dug up my Pink Fir Apple potatoes and am picking autumn raspberries and the last few Alpine strawberries when it’s dry enough. I’ve been enjoying the wildlife sharing the raspberries – they always seem popular with shield bugs and spiders at this time of year.  I’ve managed to get the hedge clippings cut in August dry enough to burn but there is still plenty more hedge to cut back!

In the garden, our small tree is covered in apples this year. They keep better on the tree so it’s ‘pick your own’ time for the moment, though I’ll have to harvest the rest before we have a frost. I’ve also picked and brined the handful of olives on the tree I was given for my birthday – a treat to look forward to in a few weeks time when they have lost their bitterness. I need to do some reading on how best to look after my tree in our cold, northern climes.  A few Helichrysums have survived the wet, windy weather while we were away and provide a welcome pop of colour, despite not looking as happy as the ones in the Botanics. For the first time in a long time the water in the pond is clear enough to see the bottom – a covering of Water milfoil and Duckweed has replaced the previously-persistent algal bloom, completely changing the pond’s appearance.  I’ll have to watch it doesn’t grow too dense.

The fortnight’s cultural highlight was a fascinating evening seeing the two person show, Three Acres and a Cow, in a local church hall. Robin Grey and Katherine Hallewell use folk songs and stories to tell the history of England through the eyes of ordinary people. There is plenty of humour and communal singing to enjoy but they have a serious point to make about how land rights were wrested away from us and the disproportionate power and money which a small number of people still have in England today as a result of the nefarious deeds of their ancestors.