I’ve been busy with the start of term over these last couple of weeks and the weather has been very mixed, to put it mildly, so getting out and about has been challenging at times!  Heavy rain in the early part of the month knocked most of the leaves off the Ash trees and many of the Sweet Chestnuts off the trees in the Botanical Gardens and on Cardiac Hill prematurely.  Sadly, the chestnuts are too small to be worth collecting this year. I’ve not seen many conkers either, except on an early run through Kirkcudbright, when I had no pockets to collect them; when I’m too grown up for that, I’ll know I’m getting old!

I have been appreciating the autumn colours though; even on the dullest, wettest days the bright glow of the Field Maples lining some of the newer paths around the university lightens the gloom and Sycamores everywhere seem to be putting on a brilliant display of reds and oranges this year.  The wonky Silver Birch in the front garden brightens our bedroom in the morning.  My little Ginkgo tree has turned golden and then lost every leaf, in the space of a week.

I’ve not had much time for deliberate fungal foraying but the field near the Maths car park has had an amazing crop of Ink Caps this year.

The black mess left when the mushrooms deliquesce (turn to mush) used to be used to make ink, hence the common name.  Ink Caps are unusually short lived, even for mushrooms, breaking down within about 24 hours of appearing using enzymes they produce themselves, as they release their spores.  As the mushrooms deliquesce, tightly-packed gills underneath the cap separate and curl back allowing the tiny spores to float into the air. The spores are well nourished because, as the fruiting bodies deliquesce, chitinase enzymes release sugary break-down products from the fungal cell walls and transport these into the spores. This  gives the spores the best possible chance of germinating successfully.

One of the pleasures of Kirkcudbright at this time of year is the autumn colours along the drive from Durham and the weather was beautiful in both directions.  Skeins of Pink-footed geese flew south overhead, arriving from Iceland and Greenland for their winter vacation on the Solway Estuary.  Driving home as the sun rose on Sunday morning I was surprised to see Rooks gathered on the telegraph wires beside the road, in numbers as large as Swifts and Swallows preparing to migrate south.

There have also been more ‘work’ trips to the Botanical gardens in the last couple of weeks, introducing the new first year student volunteers to the staff and some of the projects they might get involved with.  Weeding couch grass out of the cornfield annuals bed seems to appeal to some of them, much to the delight of the gardeners!

In my garden the Straw flowers and Michaelmas daisies are still going strong and the Virginia Creeper which rampages through our apple tree is finally earning its keep! The silky seed heads of Clematis tangutica look like candy floss in the sun.

I planted around 100 more ‘Tete a Tete’ daffodil bulbs – something to look forward to.  Their delicate flowers fit better than larger daffodils in my naturalised garden, though any pop of bright colour is welcome in early spring.  I spent time, too, thinning out the thickets of Creeping buttercups, a much easier job now the grass has been cut short.   It was good to see both Bugle and Crosswort plants putting on new growth now they are less swamped by the grass and the current mild weather should give them time to spread a little more.  

In the allotment I’ve been doing my best to pull up rampant Bindweed and hack back the old growth from the Brambles, as well as continuing to pick autumn raspberries.  The mild weather has meant the Bindweed growth shows no sign of slowing down! I’ve added gold and green Hawthorn Shield Bugs to the list pf species enjoying the raspberries.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading James by Percival Everett, a reimagining of the adventures of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the slave with whom Huck flees, travelling down the Mississippi on a home-made raft.  There is plenty of humour, despite the horrors of life as a black man on the run at the start of the American Civil War.  My particular favourite was that the black people all speak a kind of simple patois in the presence of white folk, to maintain the latter’s illusion of superiority, but speak grammatically-perfect English to each other, with a vocabulary much larger than their white ‘masters’. 

I also listened to the audio book of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun whilst travelling to my parents. Klara, the narrator, is an Artificial Friend to an isolated teenager as she grows up and, as an examination of the limits (or not) of artificial intelligence it feels very timely.

The cultural highlight was an unexpected opportunity to see Lady Maisery, a talented trio of modern folksingers and instrumentalists, at the Catstrand in New Galloway. Listen to Birdsong, from their latest album, Tender.