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There’s something in neatly stacked. In the earthiness of terracotta that isn’t labelled by the season. For snowdrops or larch cones. To be discussed ....

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This is the equivalent of the first pancake. Always a bit askew until you get your rhythm. Numb fingers, model’s own.

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The car wasn’t quite up to the job, refusing the last mile, so a trailer hitched to a tractor it was, with a pair of bolt cutters in place of secateurs.

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It took a while to fathom but after some dexterity with a thumbnail and the layers of honesty were peeling away to reveal shiny discs that transformed a bunch of seed heads into something else altogether. Not something you could rush, so a pot of tea was filled and refilled and drunk with the dregs of yesterday afternoon.

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The ghosts of Summer, now a playground and teaming with feathery flutter. The wintering firecrest have set up nearby in the holly, flashes of green and copper and a test of nerve when out foraging. You might think you have the forest to yourself when the sudden snap of a twig is enough to reveal a deer, rabbits and a cacophony of screeching pheasants.

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Tulip planting and Chalky’s a dab hand, the digging a hole part.... The trowel and paw at one, and in went Brown Sugar, Amazing Parrot, Jan Reus and West Point, dotted through with Menton, and for extra frill Redbor kale and drifts of creamy white foxgloves and delphinium requinnia. Autumn, Spring and Winter all in one day.

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Forward planning has its place, but when it comes down to a brussel sprout count almost a month ahead it can leave you a bit cold. It’s not a curmudgeonly bah humbug to the Christmas circus, more of a mentally putting to bed one season before slowly unwrapping another. All the while clocking the fir cones, the pine cones and making a start on coaxing wreaths from woven branches.

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Somewhere along the A303 the colour shifts and the houses become honeyed gold. Hewn from hamstone and mottled over time by the inevitable creep of roses and enthusiastic climbers. The flag stone floors, blue lias in parts - hefty slabs, their size demanding the order of the build. Flooring first, the walls would come later. Bedded down onto the soil, it’s a quirk in these parts that when it rains. Really rains, the floor takes on a glossy sheen. Washed by nature, which is when you know it’s rained rather a lot.

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It’s been a jangle of branches all day clattering in the wind. A natural edit with with a pair of secateurs and a barrow following closely behind. An opportunistic bargain hunting of boughs and cones.

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The biggest light bulb flicked on, albeit briefly yesterday. Enough to down tools at the desk and pad across to see where it was coming from. A spontaneous burst of sunshine, so out of character for these past few weeks that it took a moment or two to make the connection . A torch lit beam illuminating buds, their newness outshining any of the blackened stoop of Summer.

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Shades of mustard, saffron, straw and butternut squash. It’s never uniform but pixels of colour, that only together make up the frame in Autumn. And with the colour running in all this rain. The skirts of the ginkgo, less lemon, more cinnamon, less fan like, more of a mulchy stink.

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Hedgerow tweed. Impeccably tailored.

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The oranges and reds and yellows in nature burn a lot more brightly than the crackles of colour sent up as rockets on the 5th November. Still putting on a show long after, and it’s slow fade setting out the timetable of the season rather than anything on the shelves in the shops. Now is the time you notice the details; the cones, the wisps and husks, the curl of beech leaves and the arc of teasels. The rhythm of the seasons and Christmas in the making.

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The hedge trimmers have been out. Neatening the edges and carving razor sharp definition into the lanes. No doubt removing the precariousness of a left or right turn, but with it tranches of crispy and curly bracken in one clean sweep and a good few wreaths in its wake. It’s the usual game of cat and mouse in November with botanical distractions of the roadside kind and secateurs on hand just in case....

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November. It’s like the stick of rock with the writing running the entire length. The rust and the rain, and no matter where you snap a piece off, it’s still visible any which way you look at it.

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There’s a dearth of good seasonal descriptions in Autumn, and even when there is a word, it’s fiendishly hard to pronounce. Psithurism; as in a P, an S, a short I (as in sit), an unvoiced TH, a UR as in curious, and an ISM as in....Darwinism. The sound of rustling leaves or wind in the trees. There’s also apricity; the warmth of the sun in Winter. You can only hope.

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Autumn and Winter are almost hand in hand. Technicolor decline and bare branches living cheek by jowl. And then there’s the gourds - unflinchingly Autumn to the last.

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A full 360 degree turn of the lake and it’s Autumn in all its stages of undress. Leaves clung to bare branches and a wealth of gold at your feet. Reflections amplifying the burnish, much in the same way as your five year old self dotting on the colour, rubbing it into the creases and unfolding the paper to reveal a butterfly.

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The colour wheel in its entirety is a full twelve wedges, but in November it’s a slice of just four. With the occasional splurge of pink.

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The mercury’s been on the move again, the mist hugging the ground in the mornings, as though clinging on to the very last remnants of warmth. But it’s when the sun shines and the trees shake out their tresses.

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