Garden
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October 1
Early in the morning I walk down to the bottom of the
garden, serenaded by birdsong and, climbing up onto the heap of grass
cuttings inspect the Russian vine which smothers half the fence and
screens the garden from the school. I always find Russian vine a
forbidding creature, it grows rampantly and threatens to overwhelm
anything in its path, but here in the large garden it seems to have
found a natural home, quietly blooming in the wilderness.
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October 4
The garden is beginning to look tired. The Mulberry leaves
are turning yellow and in the wilderness the leaves of a small Sycamore
tree and the damsons are also lined with yellow. But flowers are still
emerging on shrubs and the bedraggled thistles still cling on to their
spiky blooms
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October 6
Very wet and everywhere dripping with water. It enticed this
rather beautiful slug out onto the lawn. I left it in peace, maybe a
blackbird will enjoy it
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October 7
A warm October day. A small flock of great tits is
patrolling the garden, acrobatic and smartly dressed then make the
place come alive. Above the magpie glides through the sky. And,
perhaps, there the back of a female house sparrow? I think perhaps it
was. I miss their chattering flocks. Later on walking in the garden
after dusk as I have done all too rarely this year I see my first bat
of the season zigzagging through the air |
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October 11
The leaves of the Lime trees have been turning copper for
some weeks, but this morning they are strewn over the lawn and the
trees themselves are looking threadbare. With a low sun sparkling
through the trees it is a beautiful sight, also for the first time in
months a Jay visits the garden.
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October 13
A dull gray morning and the garden is very quiet. The
squirrels, who have been everywhere recently, were nowhere to be seen
and the garden was empty of birds. Eventually I saw her solitary
squirrel in the wilderness and one great tit hopping up through the
Mulberry tree. But everywhere else cold and gray, made the more so by
chilly gusts of wind rippling through the undergrowth |
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October 18
The decay of the garden continues. The leaves of the
Mulberry tree are turning yellow but like a weird experiment in dyed
hair, sections of the tree turn at entirely different rates. The birds
are busy, blackbirds searching through the lime leaves scattering the
lawn and yesterday I saw the unusual sight of three wrens together in
the Sycamore tree, perhaps a family?
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October 22
The leaves continue to turn and fall. To the left the crispy
crunch of lime leaves, to the right the elegant fronds of ash leaves,
and down in the wilderness sycamore leaves turn yellow whilst the
cherry leaves turn a dark red. This leaf had miraculously turned itself
into a cone, looking as if it was a horn of plenty mysteriously
erupting from the earth
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October 29
The week has turned grey and windy, but not cold. The line
trees are now looking quite there in the black branches of the Mulberry
tree can be seen behind the thinning yellow leaves. I notice that the
buds of next spring are already present. Squirrels are ever present
digging and nuzzling into the lawn, that what they are searching for
I'm not sure
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October 31
The month ends rainy with heavy clouds leaving the earth wet
with rain. The Mulberry tree continues to lose leaves and carpet the
ground with yellow, in amongst it the squirrels frolic but everything
else is quiet on this All Hallows Eve, no skeletons appear from the
wilderness and no witches dance around the Mulberry
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The Decay of the Garden
Even the mushrooms, blind fruit of the
dark earth, must die
Sap will shrink from wood
Leaves mulch into wet soil
And flowers flame and fade before the
breath of freezing winter
Bright berries will blacken
Stalks dry and snap
The little blue tits shiver and die
And we will huddle beneath down in
hibernating sleep
It must be this way
Light must slide low across the sky
And days die before their quite alive
But must it be that the heart aches so?
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