We have seen all weathers since the Autumn Equinox last weekend, First the storm brought down a Rowan Tree, not the biggest, but one we planted some twenty-one years ago as a six-foot sapling. We hope to reset the root and a foot or so of its trunk so that we have a coppiced tree and there are already two four foot growths from the last two summers looking set to prosper. Slices of the trunk will make good wooden painting boards.

Last December we had to coppice a sweet chestnut tree growing in our woodland, too tall under the power lines. Ten months on its summer growth is spectacular. It will have to be a regular coppice!

The woodland, planted in 2009, is making good progress. Mowing the paths is ever more difficult, further trimming of side shoots will be on the agenda this winter.Then during the week we have had cold nights and hot cloudless days, a temperature range of some twenty degrees C, from 1C to 21C on still days. During the week the nights have lengthened by about half an hour as a full moon from a cloudless sky has ‘lit’ the scene.

The swallows have gone on their journey South and in the early morning we heard the first ‘roar’ of a rutting red deer stag down the valley. Every day we have been treated to large squadrons of  geese overflying us. Their base is at Wimblball Lake, but where they go, back and forth, we don’t know, is it to graze local fields or do they go down to the coastal plain either the North Somerset shore or the South Welsh shore?