A Garden of Flying Leaves

Radnor hills from Old Radnor/Pencraig, October 16th 2008

The garden full of leaves for the second day running - cool, sunny days with a stiff breeze and cooler again at night. Househunting in Old Radnor this morning, some astonishing views of the Radnor hills - another village with a dual Welsh/English identity and so two names. Some recent images that I have forgotten to upload.

Welsh or Himalayan poppy, Presteigne, October 8th 2008

Fresh beech leaves and churned mud, Wapley Hill, October 15th 2008

Midway Point

Beech tree and firs, Wapley Hill, October 15th 2008

October the fifteenth, almost midway through October and so midway through the season. And I celebrated my forty-fifth birthday last Thursday, a midway point of my forties.

It has been a good autumn for colour. Driving north at the beginning of the week the colours were striking; maples and chestnuts, beeches and birches. Our beech has been losing leaves for a few days now and the garden this morning was a whirl of flying leaves, all perfectly bronze or gold. In reality of course the tree has many colours in it, from yellows and golds through browns to leaves that are still green. A walk on Wapley Hill this morning and there the beeches show up clearly against the evergreen background, so even though they are not as advanced (the ones I saw are on the southern slopes of the hill, I wonder if this make a difference?) as our garden beech they are just as spectacular. A cold still morning, last night's rain dripping off the leaves as we sat for snacks on the hill.

We have also had cool nights and a lot of mists. Perhaps I see the season more because of keeping this journal; it is a means of focussing on what is happening around me. A lot of mushrooms starting to appear and we could smell them - stinkhorns, I think - on the hill this morning.

A memory-day; I raise a glass to absent friends and family.

Autumn in the City

Cleveland Square and the Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool, 3rd October 2008

A chance to wander through the new centre of Liverpool last week. Huge changes to the fabric of the old Chavasse Park and the old streets leading down to the Dock Road - more of this on the landscape writings blog I think. But I was also intrigued by the trees, the natural landscape tamed and imported to decorate the new walkways and 'streets'. Suddenly, from a walkway, I looked down into Cleveland Square and I could see a blush of autumn colour caught by the sun through the buildings; it would make an interesting project to see a city as a wild space divided by buildings rather than a concrete landscape decorated with trees and parks.

Frost

Two nights ago we had our first frost. A thin, cold start to the day, the air dank and cold, as if it had been stored or came from under the sea; bunker air. There was a heavy dew and the grass in the garden was lank and heavy, the beech leaves glistening. (At night in the kitchen light they seem to glow expectantly, like anxious jewels; a trick of the light, warming the colour.) Driving to Hereford the mist in the valleys was layered, shifting, the hills clear and black above it, as if floating. The harvest is mostly in - we see tractor-loads of apples and potatoes on the roads - and the fields were bare and tawny, soft chocolate or a ruddy brown. There was not a breath of wind and the trees were motionless in the light mist. The hedgerows look mottled, green leaves and brown stems after hedge-trimming. The sun struggled to get through but lit distant hillsides softly, a hazy light, like looking back in time.

It has been a good autumn so far for leaf colour; the maples in the car park, our beech tree, and everywhere there seem to be huge crimson splashes of Russian vine - or Virginia creeper or Boston vine, I never know - and the chestnuts and beech trees generally are spectacular.

We walked in to the city centre over the Wye footbridge. The river had risen about eight feet and was a surging tide of coffee-coloured water, carrying large branches, a real flood water, moody and dangerous. It had burst its banks and partly flooded the Bishop's Meadow park.

I found an unexpected heart to the fields' colours in the Cathedral. I love the fat Romanesque columns and pale red sandstone, but on this visit I noticed a deeper, darker light - ambience - in the choir stalls, which were lit but inaccessible. The dark wood seemed to glow with a ruby light, a polish, and set off by the gold detail and suspended crown-of-thorns sculpture they seemed the warm heart of the county, connected somehow - by colour or mood or just journey - to a bleak agricultural landscape.

Evening

Beech tree detail, Coombes Moor, October 5th 2008

Not a breath of wind, every beech leaf motionless against the cold peach of the sunset; the temperature is dropping fairly quickly, we are always a few degrees colder here than our nearest weather station. I found a moment before on the way in from the garage, a moment of stillness to see the sunlight in the trees and just touching the turned beech leaves; a magical thirty seconds, an awareness of good fortune, an immediate living in the present. And then the day rolled on, the frozen milk became too cold to carry, something needed doing, the moment passed. But a beautful moment. And now the dusk has come to the garden - at 6.50pm - and the western sky is a soft, cold apricot or peach colour; more fruit images! I will try and find a moment to get outside in a minute. I thought I'd upload another image of the tree from this afternoon, a sharp contrast between today and 18th September.

Beech

Beech tree, Coombes Moor, October 5th 2008

A rare five minutes of sunshine on an otherwise cool, grey windy day - I had forgotten the glooms of autumn, that feeling of not being properly lit; and then the sun comes out and the light on the beech tree shows the advance of the season, the changing of the leaves, very clearly. This photograph shows the tree from the south, so it is the south-eastern aspect of the beech which is changing first. I wonder why? I remember one tree in a park near a flat I used to have; it always turned from mid-August, weeks ahead of the others on the avenue; a frost-pocket perhaps, a building's shadow.

I recently walked along the Prom in Liverpool, another large patch of beechwoods, another area of my internal woodland. And again, on the shores of Windermere, some truly gigantic beech trees, the last of the sunlight on the roots and branches making them look oiled, metallic, capable of movement. But in neither beech wood were the trees as advanced into autumn as the large beech in our garden.

Straight from a wobbly camera - beech roots, Windermere, early October 2008: oiled, muscular, wary....

Ordinary beauty

Not looking for New England - maples in the car park, 4th October 2008

We have been in the Lakes for a week, staying on the shores of Windermere. A lovely time to be in the Lake District, cool nights and warm days, patches of autumnal colour rather than great swathes. Some glorious views of distant mountains and quiet calm moments on the lake with an astonishing variety of bird life - cormorants, mergansers, swans, ducks, perhaps a dabchick. I will put more thoughts on the landscape writings blog.

We noticed some changes when we came home. The beech tree in the garden has a lot more golden and yellow leaves than a week ago, and the grass has a scattering of beech leaves on it. The woods behind the house and over towards Shobdon Woods Hill are more mottled than they were; the turning leaves are gentle and subtle, a fading within each leaf, like eyes closing slowly.

And on the way home from Leominster this morning we stopped briefly at the supermarket for supplies. And the trees in the car park were a blaze of colour. I think they are maples, but the range of colour - from deep, almost untouched, green, through yellows and peaches and reds to crimson - I found astonishing. I have written before that one purpose of these journals is to make me see the beauty in the everyday, to consciously be aware of the ordinary beauty around me. The maple trees in Morrison's car park today were certainly that.