You let go of September with regret. A good September day beats even the best summer day. On a calm afternoon about a fortnight ago, in a small corner of this eastern part of the country, a warm, bright sun showed up something never noticed before. A big Douglas Fir seemed, from about a hundred yards away, to be dotted with light strips. Coming up close it was seen that they were banana-yellow cones.
The book says these cones go from green to brown, and this is the colour we mostly see them in, but never before had these eyes seen the intermediate stage of this yellow. And all around, it was the same in other Douglas Fir trees, in a profusion not seen before. Three inches long.
The star of the garden was a huge buddleia, a weyeriana, and covered with flowers of apricot.
Covered, too, with winged creatures; butterflies, identified as Red Admirals and a few Painted Ladies, tortoishells, perhaps, and the bigger ones swooped around your head like bats. You could swear you heard their wingbeats. There were bees, honey and bumble, and many other unidentified winged creatures. Then the odd hips of the moyesii rose; flask-shaped one book says, but they remind you irresistibly of the inverted Perrier water bottles;
as to colour going from a shrimp pink to a full red. About two inches long. And the rosa rugosa, with its deep, deep red, round hips.
The holly berries are changing colour but not as fast as the haws. Elderberries slow. And the sloes which seemed, a couple of weeks ago to be nearing ripeness, are still hard though as lovely a purple as before. Cones doing well on the umbrella tree or stone pine. The John Downey apple tree has a reasonable crop this year. Everywhere, this being a still day, you drift in and out of zones of lovely odours.
The river runs clean. Though the kingfisher is daily seen, the dippers seem to have brought out their brood and are gone. One bird still has not made its usual parade. For years and years, regularly, around the bend of the river a mother duck has come, swinging in the current, while five or seven or so ducklings manoeuvre around the edges. None this year.