Autumn musings...

Looking out of the kitchen window of the cottage, it seems as if the world is curling itself up in readiness for the soft fall of darkness. It is only a little way away now that the clocks have gone back, but I have always loved autumn. There is a mellowness to it, like butter in the mouth, and it covers the landscape in its own special variety of moods and colours.

The bottom of our little valley runs into another with a vast lake resting in its belly. Around its banks are steep, rocky slopes: granite like nearly all the stone in this part of the world. Up from the water and covering the craggy sides of the rock are spruce in their thousands and, harmoniously among them, the beautiful silver birches. In autumn, the leaves of the birches turn to a kaleidoscope of coppers and bronzes, almost too bright to be believed. They burst out, on those perfect autumn days, against brilliant, piercing, blue skies.

On other afternoons, such as this one, our little habitat is filled to the brim with mist sweeping up from the lake and hanging about us. It could have a mournful air to it if we let it, if it weren't so incredible beautiful. Sound echoes within it, strange and otherwordly.

Then, of course, there are the little harvests: the glory of the glut. The potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes gathered in from the veg patch and the unabashed joy taken in finding new recipes to wrap them in. Experimental and sometimes disastrous, there is nothing better than these kitchen explorations.

I have been drying sage and mint from the herb garden, hoping to save as much as I can before the frost. Autumn is about this too... the preservation of precious things. We feel it in our bones, a readying of ourselves, like the nature from my window, for winter.

Tomorrow, I think, we will go mushrooming...