welsh hills again

Over the summer for six weeks I had one or the other of our children's dogs while our children and their families went on holiday.  Different dogs, different temperaments but one constant: every day for around an hour I went walking with them.  I walked when it was wet, when it was windy, when it was cold.  I walked when it was so misty the view had entirely disappeared.  I walked when I was tired and when I didn't feel like it.  I admit that by the end of the summer I was quite "dogged out", love them though I do, and I have settled back into my usual pattern of two or three walks a week.  But I should also admit that at the end of that six weeks I had lost three pounds and now, eight weeks later, I have put it back on again. So I am trying to walk every day again, not primarily for the weight control but for health and wellbeing.  Walking every day seems to be one of the best things we can do for our health.  It helps prevent the o...

I love the seasons. What would it be like to live in a constant temperature? A constant spring? An endless summer? An everlasting cold? No, I love the change. And here in the UK the seasons themselves are mutable. Summer is often not hot and dry. Spring might not be an unfurling of life but icy, cold and wet. And this autumn has not been damp and blustery but long and warm and mellow as caramel. Winter has come now but how different this mild late born winter is from last year's lion's grip, the whole world stilled under his heavy paw. This is the 5th of December last year, steely under snow, and then the same date this year, all sun and silhouetted trees. This year there are marigolds still throwing out flowers. A year ago today the field was blanketed under snow. Green and gold fennel this year and monochrome hedges last. Rose hips and snow. I love seasons.

September can be a golden month, all soft gold light, tawny leaves, rosehips and shimmering dews.  Not today though.  Today there is a cold wind blowing with the faint, steely smell of winter in it.  Grey clouds scud fast on a low sky above the ridge.  Everywhere there are things to do before the cold weather comes. The second hatching of chicks this year produced these three: two Scots Dumpies, with the grey and white feathering now settling as they lose their fluffy chickness and emerge from the spiky teenage stage, and one brown Barnevelder, still a bit scraggy about the neck.  They are going outside in a week or so to a new chicken house which Ian has been weather proofing. I like the design of this one very much, with the area under the house to extend the run for the chickens when they are confined, a ramp down from the house and such refinements as a double nest box, just seen at the side, and a peephole at the back.  Ian tells...

When you live somewhere like this the seasons really matter.  I thought I was always someone who noticed seasons.  When I lived and worked in cities I would take out my knee length boots and winter coat in November and pack away my summer stuff.  I would lament the days when I left for work in the dark and came home in the dark.  I would chase the light at weekends, walking in parks, kicking leaves, hating that time when the leaves lost their crispness and turned to sullen slipperiness. But up here it is something else again.  Firstly autumn itself can be glorious in a way I have only glimpsed before, impossibly beautiful like the day in my header picture, so I have been quite won over by its beauty.  I have stopped treating each whirling leaf as a harbinger of doom and started living more firmly in the now.  Secondly there is a ludicrous amount of stuff to do in the garden.  I have never had so much garden as I do now, love it though I do, and ...

I have been mulling away about why I garden and almost sat down to do a philosphical muse but somehow I find I have so much to do outside that I can't spare the time. Must be a moral in there for another time! So I thought I would share some of what is pleasing me in the garden today. This is the new bed in the side garden, still full of foliage and, astonishingly, some of the white foxgloves which were thronging it in mid summer. Last year this area was a building site and after much digging and clearing this is what it looked like in spring this year. The blueberries are turning a fabulous colour. We have had fruit this year for the first time and the bushes have had to be covered against the hens. It is wonderful to see the turning foliage without a draping of green netting. At this time of year the hens are welcome in the garden as they scratch about in the empty beds. The trees are starting to turn too. The sycamore is always first and this year is a buttery gold. Logs are s...

I have always loved September. It might help that it is my birthday month. It might also be because I was a child who liked school and, even though I had loved the summer holiday, I also loved the buying of the new pencil case, the new pencils and rubbers, the folding back of the stiff cover of an exercise book to reveal a pristine sheet of clean paper, smelling of promise. October is OK. There is still a chance of a day filled with the golden light and long shadows of an Indian summer. The only problem with October is that it is followed by November when the clocks have gone back and the days are grey with wind and rain and the light has all gone by mid afternoon and I have to work hard at shedding the sense of gloom and focussing on the light and warmth of Christmas to distract me from the grievous loss of my outside life. So I have mixed feeling about autumn. Is it beautiful, with flowers still glowing and crops thronging the kitchen? Or is it full of sadness, full of the loss of su...