Golden Tree Moment

I always look forward to one particular Autumn moment – as you walk through a narrow gap between our street and the main road, straight ahead is a beautifully shaped maple tree which turns completely golden, just before its leaves begin to descend. 

Last year, the moment never came – a gale stripped the foliage before it had yellowed. But this year it was back in its full glory.

EXCEPT,

When I went to photograph the tree to send to my children, I discovered something new and even taller growing there.  There is now a huge and hideous 5G telecomms mast sprouting amid the Autumn splendour.

Our neighbours have been fighting this excrescence, although Nigel and I were a little ambivalent since we would appreciate better phone reception. 

There is probably Somebody’s Law that where Residents’ Associations are strong, phone masts are few and far between. 

However, there’s a rumour that instead of supporting a variety of different networks, this new mast will serve only one, and one none of us uses at that.  If such proves to be the case, it will be very sad indeed as even more 5G masts will need to be built, and we shall not be the only ones with an unwelcome addition to our Autumn treescape.

The Time of Year For Action

I remember my Latin teacher at school explaining that Autumn was her favourite time of year – it marked the start of the academic year and for her it was a time of new beginnings.

I agree.  In addition, Autumn russets are the colours which suit me.  Not only that, but I have an Autumn birthday. 

As the leaves turn gold and the clocks shift back, there is usually an anticipation of cosiness and hibernation.

This year, however, the UN’s climate conference, COP26, is about to take place in Glasgow, and it means we must not settle into the inertia of winter just yet. 

If we want to see more golden Autumns, it is vital that we try to influence the world leaders in any way we can to curb Climate Catastrophe. 

So get involved in signing petitions, campaigning and marching.  Politicians only act when they can see how important an issue is to their electorate.  Please help convince them.

Take part in the Global Day of Action, November 6^th.

https://cop26coalition.org/gda/

For readers in St Albans, Friends of the Earth is organising a peaceful rally, meeting St Albans Arena, midday Nov 6^th and marching to the Clock Tower for speeches.

Elsewhere, google or consult the Facebook pages of your local Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion.

Birthday with Trees

 There have a lot of trees in my life this year. 

Just before Lockdown, Perran and I visited ‘Among the Trees’, an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

Twice this year, we’ve done the tree trail in our local park, and my tree identification has got much sharper.

I’ve read:

Ghost Trees by Bob Gilbert

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Woehlleben

Wildwood by Richard Deakin

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I’ve produced reviews on books about trees both for Radio Verulam and for the St Albans Podcast.

And I’ve written a short story for WRITERSREBEL – Tree Girl.

So I didn’t mind at all when we decided to keep my birthday celebrations outdoors and visited the brightly coloured Autumn trees of Kew Gardens.  What could be nicer!

And as the evenings draw in, I am looking forward to the October finale as the trees around me turn to gold and bronze and I think I shall read ‘The sixteen trees of the Somme’ by Lars Mytting (passed on to me recently by my neighbour Alex).

 

Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill – please help your planet

Please follow the links below (which will take you swiftly and easily through to your MP’s email) and ask your MP to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill which will be debated during this session of Parliament.

A Mast Year

For months the oak trees have been growing heavy with a mass of acorns. Now those are becoming ripe and falling to the ground.  Jays and squirrels are ecstatic at the bounty. 

Sweet chestnuts are also well-laden this year.  The hazels are bearing plenty of nuts too although the squirrels always pillage them before I get there.  Dog roses and hawthorns are embellishing the hedgerows with hips and haws like blood-red beads.

A year when woodland nuts and fruits are especially plentiful is called a mast year.  It is the trees’ opportunity to reproduce – there are so many seeds that the animals and birds cannot possibly eat them all.

Folklore says that if seeds and berries are abundant in Autumn, it will be a harsh winter ahead -  God’s way of providing for the birds and animals.  However, weather patterns show little correlation between abundant Autumns and cold winters.  It’s more likely that the favourable conditions of the preceding summer are the cause.

But what always grips me is the exquisite details of these Autumn seeds – the burnished acorn fitting exactly into its cup. The beech pods like tiny jewel boxes lined with gold velvet to hold the precious, three-sided seeds. And the horse chestnut pod, armoured with spikes like a Mediaeval weapon – all to keep the polished mahogany conker safe inside.

Whether the folklore is right or not, Autumn certainly looks like the work of a Master Craftsman.

The Very Helpful Spider

The Daddy Long Legs Spider ( Pholcus phalangioides) is a thin, wispy creature, but do not underestimate it: it forms a lasso from its silk and traps large, scary house spiders by the leg. Then it eats them.

It is for this reason that I have been allowing Daddy Long Legs Spiders to remain in our house as non-paying lodgers.

However, recently I have hired some help with the cleaning and my little eight-legged pals have been decimated.

And now it is the autumn and the annual parade of large male house spiders is under way. They are strutting their (very long and hairy) legs in search of females.

This year they are so big I can hear them before I see them, scuttling across the floor. And there are a lot of them.

As I say I like to think there is an increase in numbers because of the diligence of my cleaning lady in killing their predators.

But this is because I don't want to contemplate the alternative - Are the males in fact being drawn to our house for a specific reason. Is there perhaps, under a sofa or behind a wardrobe, an incredibly attractive, very large female spider...Just waiting for the right guy to turn up so she can lay hundreds of eggs, which in turn will become hundreds of house spiders?

Chestnuts not Pumpkins

I haven’t been able to take country walks for a few months now, owing to my faulty foot. 

It has made me feel disorientated. 

Every year I monitor the seasons closely, marking the time of year by what is coming into bloom, what going to seed.

I am delighted when a sunny weekend summons a cloud of butterflies from their pupae, or when a wistful breeze in late summer has the swallows congregating on the telegraph lines. 

I’m even happy when oncoming Autumn means all the blades of grass are hung with spiders’ silk hammocks.

But this year, deprived of the usual signs of the turning seasons, I feel stranded back in the early summer.

“Wait, it can’t be Autumn yet – I haven’t had my summer.”

Thanks to the buses, I have been better at getting to the town centre than to the country.

But in the shops, the seasons are weirdly distorted.

In the shops, seasons start and end long before the weather and daylength mark the actual season.

In the shops, a season only exists AT ALL if it presents a merchandising opportunity.

Now, for several weeks, it has been orange pumpkins and tinsel - Halloween with Christmas trimmings. No mention of Autumn.

I was desperate to find some reality and begged Nigel, Carenza and Will to take me gathering chestnuts in the woods, something I do most years. 

We had missed most of the sleek brown nuts in their prickly cases, but gathered just enough to put by for the chestnut stuffing to serve with Christmas dinner in a couple of months’ time.

More than that, it was a relief to see sun shining through the yellow and bronze leaves of the wood and to encounter Autumn in her considerable beauty.

This Cornish hairdresser was celebrating Halloween,
but I'm not sure it would make me want to get my hair cut there.

You Have Saved the Best 'til Last

Driving down the dual carriageway, I peer out the windscreen and say anxiously to Nigel, “How much longer will they last?”

“Another week maybe?  Not long?”

I love Autumn.  Did I mention?

I love the way that trees which seem a uniform green in Summer each choose a different colour.  The beeches are copper, the birches gold.  I love the way the spindle tree, drab and insignificant for ten months of the year suddenly becomes the Rupaul of the hedgerow - camp pink berries and fabulous, flame coloured foliage. 

But now the leaves were nearly all over for another year.

I was supposed to be going for a last Autumn walk with Carol, but unfortunately something came up.

I decided I’d go anyway.

It was early, bright and frosty.

And the colours took my breath away.

This wasn’t so much the end of Autumn as a grand finale.

As an empty-nester, one of my preoccupations is a regret for the passing of time and the shift from one generation to the next.

But when I saw the trees that morning, a phrase from the Gospels kept going through my head – “You have saved the best 'til last.”

Love Autumn!

chestnuts and a parasol toadstool

I heart Autumn.  I really do. 

In education Autumn represents the start of a new year.  Full of promises and excitement.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

My birthday falls in Autumn.

The trees are all wearing MY colours.

And Nigel and I get to forage.

This year we had the added bonus of David and Carolyn coming to stay.  Carolyn wears Autumn colours too, otherwise I obviously wouldn’t have invited them.

The other really cool thing about them was that even after knowing us for twenty-five years, they still took our word for it that the big toadstools were edible and consumed my risotto without blenching.

They’ve gone home to the North East now.  I’m sure we’d hear if they’d suffered from our toadstools. 

Unless of course they’re seated paralysed and drooling in a layby on the M1.

But they won’t be.  Things never go wrong in Autumn!

Autumn’s so great.