In the Thick of Autumn

The leaves have fallen at last and so I set out into the Night Planted Orchard to start its winter grooming. We have had three days of fog and the air is dense with water. Nothing can stir it. There is not a whisper of wind. The only vibration is a singing bird. The ghosts of tall plants in the wild part of the garden have turned silver and drip with water. Teasels. Queen Anne's Lace. Tall stems of grass seed. Martial, spiny thistles. I disturb a parliament of crows in the grand willow tree. They flap away through the air, struggling with its density, swimming overhead like a schoal of fish. This is the Fen air which bewitches your lungs and gnaws at your bones.

Mist, brimstone and hubris.

I stepped out into the Night Planted Orchard and was transported to my childhood. The moisture in the November air was congealing into a fine fog, heavy and textured. Behind it was a layer of woodsmoke from bonfires away in the village. Behind that there was the scent of brimstone carried from distant fireworks. An ancient memory warmed me, filling my nostrils with hot Bovril fumes twisting up from a warm mug. In my mouth I could feel the heavy suet dumplings smothered in thick  steaming lobby cooked for many hours. In my memory, the bonfire is a soaring, ravenous beast, close enough to twizzle eyebrows and make wet woollen coats steam. In my memory bangers and crackerjacks crackle at my feet. In my memory, bonfire night is a warm, intimate thing made of family and fire, warm clothes and hot food in defiance of the spirit of winter peering hungrily from the trees. It had a hint of menace to remind us that nature is a predator only partially tamed. In my memory the fireworks, are more soft than loud, like tiny bonfires, remembrances of fallen summer flowers. I love fire and I love fireworks, and these memories are why.

Today the bonfires are more distant. The air has the more modern scent of scorched sugar on heavy meats which struggle to push aside that faint hint of the past. The fireworks are managed and remote. They climb suspensefully into the sky and detonate like the start of war over doomed cities. Now it is a more distant thing, more strategic. The cluster of autumn festivals has changed. They all hark back to that resistance of coming winter, whatever people might say. Where Halloween and Remembrance Day were once sombre and reflective in their different ways, they are becoming more celebratory. In your face, you enemies of ours. In your face, evil spirits. In your face, Winter, your days are numbered. We no longer try to scare spirits from the garden at this time, instead we assault the world. We are the predator and the world lights bonfires to keep us at bay.

A gift from the Frost Spirit

The first frost was late this year. In early September the temperature dropped to the mid-teens (about 60F) and stayed there. The leaves hung half-fallen from the trees, the grass kept growing and the medlars fattened. Yesterday we finally had the first frost. As is the way of things, a frosty night usually means a brilliant winter morning and we were rewarded with a beautiful sunlit frost pattern across the skylights. Welcome, Winter. We have prepared your place in the garden. Be good now.