I realised slightly belatedly that starting a wildflower quest at the end of the summer was going to be a bit of a slow start. I’ve collected a good few already, but ended up coming home with more pictures of some of the beautiful hedgerows that were planted locally to us when the Development Corporation redesigned parts of Peterborough in the late 70’s and 80’s.
With the help of the potato, I’ve started noticing guelder rose, blackthorn, wild privet and endless varieties of dogwood, none of which I really knew by name or would have particularly told the difference between. And then of course we started looking down and seeing something new – mushrooms! So the autumn project has become hedgerows and fungi, with the hope that by spring I’ll recognise these trees without their berries and have learned to look for treasure in the gloomy muddy months as well as in the sun. Max is much better than me at looking down not up and seeing the mushrooms and toadstools – I think it must be the Devon childhood – so hopefully we will tick off the list between us.
We haven’t actually managed to get out much in the last couple of weeks, work is hectic and we’ve got a huge garden rebuild project going on that has required a vast amount of us actually getting out there and heaving slabs and hardcore around. It’s been rewarding to be part of the actual process (keeping costs down as it has gone a bit over the time anticipated) and I’m actually really glad to be able to look around and know I did some of it and was strong and fit enough to shovel about 10 tonnes of hardcore and lift a lot of very large stone slabs, but I’m missing both the nature time and the walk and talk time that we get when we are both out together just mulling over our weeks. We’ve got a weekend away together with people we love soon though, so hoping that we will spot some pretties while we are away. It’s been cold and foggy here and I suspect much of the glorious autumn colours are fading fast but hopefully we will find flashes here and there of things to find and tick off.
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