Chilly evenings, morning mists, first leaves falling. The goats can't wait to be let out in the morning: they gallop down the slope to shovel up the first leaves..............they then go back to bed, and don't get up properly until about 10:00.
It has been a funny year. There should, by now, be little spiders' nests in the grass and the hedgerows, flocks of Canada geese flying "south" for the winter - though they mostly just go as far as Leeds Castle. There should be lots of different types of mushrooms,particularly the Yellow Staining Mushroom, which looks very much like a shop mushroom or field mushroom until you scratch its surface with a fingernail. Then it stains sulphur yellow; it is poisonous. There should be lots of late wasps making a nuisance of themselves, and ladybirds hibernating. What there shouldn't be is peacock butterflies, cabbage white butterflies and columns of tiny flies spinning around in circles in columns. It's been a funny year.
A while ago I kept a nature diary - earliest frost on 8 October................I was either moaning about the lack of rain or complaining that it never stopped raining. I have a note from 2010 about 30 swallows gathering on the electricity wires in Barn Meadow. Well, the electricity wires are gone now, and so are the swallows.
What I have found is three mushrooms from the Boletus family. There are 27 species of Boletus in my book; two are poisonious, 24 are tasteless, and the other, Boletus edulis, is the Porcine or Cep mushroom, which retails fresh for up to £80/kg. Unfortunately, I don't know which of the 27 species I have, so having photographed one of the three, I very reluctantly threw it in the bin.
