Autumnal

Finally, 14 days on I am emerged from Ill Land. It has been a long haul.
For the past couple of weeks we have had crazy warmth for the time of year (often 18°C by day and 10°C by night) – the Atlantic-passaged end of Hurricane Melissa. On Friday morning we were outside gardening in t-shirts and my face got sunburnt!

On Wednesday evening we sat at the top of a hill in the car to watch the localish school fireworks – the same ones we have been to almost every year for the past 20 years as this last week – the week after the schools’ autumn half term – was the week we always came north for an autumn break. We used to go into the school field to watch, but now the kids running around waving light sabres and screaming (which they never used to do) drives me nuts, so we now have our own quieter viewing from above.
We therefore have a mental 20 year history of exactly the usual weather and temperatures for this week – something that no other local residents can have. It certainly has never before been 14.5°C at 7pm on 5th November. Even 10 years ago we often had to scrape the ice off the car windscreen before we could go out to the fireworks.
Yesterday we were taken back (or maybe that should be aback) 27 years by an account of what we were doing on 8th November 1997. That made me feel really old – how could that have been almost half a lifetime ago (well, give or take 4 years)?

Originally, the weather forecast for this weekend and next week was zero overnight. But, that time has now moved a week further forward. However, Mr BW was working to the original date, and so most everything that needs protecting over winter is now safely tucked up in the greenhouse, in the cold frames or inside. He has also managed to get the ‘allotment’ (what we call the subsidiary veg plot in the orchard field) cleared and covered ready for the winter.

There are small violas in the tops of the pots of bulbs that we have planted as hope for the spring. We find violas much hardier than pansies.

There were queen bumble bees supping from them on Friday – presumably stocking themselves up before digging in somewhere to hibernate for the winter. Not quite as good as the hummingbird hawk moth we saw a couple of times a couple of weeks ago, but, who’d have thought this is England’s northernmost county.

I’m delighted by the cornus (dogwood) stems visible from the conservatory window. Actually, I’m delighted by how the whole garden looks. Mr BW has worked so hard to make my vision become reality. I can design, pick a colour pallette, choose and order plants, and direct, but I don’t have the energy or balance these days to do the manual work required to plant and maintain. Thank goodness he still does.

I can’t bring myself to cut down perennial flowers that are still blooming yet, so hope the frost hurries up and kill off the tops as it will be good to get it done. All the seedheads will remain until the birds have eaten them all and they look a dishevelled mess.

In addition to fireworks, our week has also been full of unexpected grenades.
Regular readers will recall how part of why we moved north was to get away from the need to be constantly fighting planning applications for new towns, airport expansions, and inappropriate developments in the countryside. Well… this week has felt like back to the future.
What is proposed by one greedy person (probably financially backed by one of the 10 ‘big players’) won’t affect us directly – we are too far away – but, if approved, it will undoubtedly be followed by tens and eventually hundreds of further applications which could potentially affect the whole county’s landscape and challenge tourism and the livelihoods of many others who have chosen sustainable diversification and worked incredibly hard to make their schemes work. Some serious brainwork, research, investigation, writing, and networking has been required to develop appropriate responses. I’ve been madly loading bullets for others to fire, but it will be months, maybe years, before it is decided.
Apologies for being cryptic, but I don’t want to say things that can be picked up on searches. All I will say – and I never thought I’d be saying this – is that Google’s AI has made the task so much easier. Once one has learnt how to tame it by asking the right questions, and then to interrogate it thoroughly to check sources, it is so helpful to quickly gather and sift vast quantities of information. Who’d have thought it was only May this year when it started appearing at the top of search results in a very basic form?
I don’t see myself ever allowing AI to write things for me, but for identifying and then crunching information, it’s been a godsend. Thanks to those of you reading who live in areas already blighted who have found an unexpected email from me in their inboxes and who have kindly shared their thoughts.
There was a very interesting programme on Radio 4’s the Bottom Line a couple of weeks ago about how AI can be used to boost productivity in the UK. Worth a listen, if you haven’t already heard it.

I couldn’t believe the carrots Mr BW pulled for tonight’s dinner.
How I miss Johnnie Walker and SOTS on a Sunday afternoon… it’s just over a year since his last programme now.