The circle of the Mother’s Garden seasons is a kaleidoscope of charms.
I should have been telling of the stirrings of autumn a month ago, of that bluster and keenness that shakes the farm from summer stupor, but the cloudless calm lingered over Iberia to the end of October and the heat only waned by gentle degree.
Rain finally came this week, and we have waltzed in puddles, and for three nights the cold has prompted us to welcome our wood burner back to life. For months, though, clear skies have given an edge to far mountains and radiant Jupiter defined the night hour.
The daily round includes giving the horses their night feed at about 10pm, and I never make haste. For weeks I have tracked the largest planet in our solar system as it has slowly overhauled the moon, three of its own satellites visible with my binoculars.
And when I wake there is Jupiter again, framed in the top window of our vaulted bedroom, as still as the air.Daytime temperatures are still circa 65 degrees F, 28 degrees C, and it would be easy to be lulled back to sleep in the belief that there is ample time, but we are wiser after ten mountain winters. And should we ever be tempted to doze then the creatures that cohabitate these ten acres prompt us to pull our fingers out.
La Petita our plump pony has grown her inch-deep winter coat; the barn swallows and meadow-feeding hoopoe are long one, the latter gifting us a striped feather; snakes can been seen in search of winter lodgings, one by our friends’ back door; and the mice have moved in. The pantomime season comes early at Mother’s Garden, and this year the intelligent little rodents who secretly rule the world have given me an exceptional run-around.
First the mice thought it would be a wheeze if they moved into our holiday cottage and surprise some lovely Americans from Idaho. That backfired slightly because the Americans were of the log cabin, wild-side variety and didn’t bat an eyelid. I, though, blew a gasket, which was probably reward enough.
The cottage was supposed to be 100 per cent proof. We have had sparrows under the tiles for years and nothing more alarming than the very occasional creature wandering in – and out – through an open door.
A mouse had made an appearance the week before, during the previous visitors’ sojourn at Mother’s Garden, and was duly trapped and released far away.
“Ha, well, there you have it. Or rather I do….Absolutely nothing to worry about,” I said, laughing like Basil Fawlty, backing out of the front door, the trap behind my back. “Just the one. All sorted. Won’t happen again. Goodness – it that the time?”
Then, as we were cleaning in preparation for the Americans to roll up I had serious doubts. There was evidence, tiny bits of chewed wood, on the stairs. This sent me on a frantic inch by inch analysis of every roof beam until a visiting helper pointed at my turn-ups.
I was, as ever, resplendent in tatty farm jeans, torn t-shirt and mad hair.
“I think it’s you,” she whispered politely.
Fair cop. I had been up the land for an hour that morning, sawing my way through a significant pile of logs, so my turn ups were brim full with sawdust. Which was a relief, of course, and I lapsed once more into the naive belief that mice are solitary. Fool.
It turned out to be a classic two-pronged attack with a farmhouse invasion by a battalion, which came to a head when one scout popped out from behind the lamp on Maggie’s side of our bed …. while she was in it. I had just figured out the cottage point of entry (the air vent beneath the fireplace which I should have covered with a fine grill seven years ago) so Maggie decamped down there for three nights while I sat up, blearily bemused.
Unlike the cottage, the ancient farmhouse has innumerable accesses, but there had to be one in our room because on the second night I closed the door and I still had company. Could it be the air vents in our chimney? Was that gnawing sound coming from behind the power socket? In the end I deduced from the droppings where I should launch a counter attack. I ripped out a length of ill-fitting skirting board – which had one of those wafer thin gaps beneath it that mice can inexplicably squeeze through – to find a cavity the size of a shoe box. It was invasion HQ. A large bucket of cement later all is quiet once more, and Maggie has come home.
You should have seen the rodent rodeo today, though, when we decided in the last the light to move the compost bins. Our 400 litres of wine had fermented and we had four barrow loads of grape pulp in front of the barn to depose of before our insatiable free-range chickens became hopelessly inebriated.
That meant doing the compost shuffle – cleaning everything out, setting aside what was ready to use and mixing the pulp with half rotten compost. We have one main bin constructed out of old pallets and I wish you could have witnessed Biba the dog when I lifted up the base pallet. Scores of mice fanned out like the Monty Python sketch of the 100 metres for people with no sense of direction. Biba was like someone trying to catch several balls at the same time and ending up with nothing.
As for the chickens, there is still enough pulp on the ground to make them smile inanely and to distract them from ruining our persimmons.
Our largest, well-watered main persimmon tree, sagging with fruit, sits in a pool of rich green grass on the otherwise parched little terrace in front of the house. For more than a week the chickens have been sailing around in the long grass, taking it in turns to launch themselves several feet into the air to peck at the fruit: Surreal to watch, like some sort of improbable fairground entertainment.
With their entourage of sparrows they can, as some of you will know from experience, wreak havoc in the vegetable patch if they can breach the defences. I spent more than an hour yesterday fortifying some winter lettuces, only to come out of the barn with a bucket full of pulp to see it had taken the pea brains less than an hour to defeat me.
An hour or two in the garden, though, is good for the soul, isn’t it? The garlic and cabbages are in, and much of the wild fennel is out. The courgettes are still flowering, just, and Maggie has decided we will keep the far end of the plot clear to see if the rocket has re-seeded itself.
I would like to say that our autumn tomatoes, now at the top of the canes, are our best of the year, but that wouldn’t be true. Amid the brambles beside the septic tank Maggie has found a mountain of self-seeded cherry tomatoes. The prettiest discovery of all, though, was hiding in the watering can.
It is an orthoptera, but is this star-burst of breathtaking colour with the iridescence of coral a grasshopper or a cricket? I think it is a variety of grasshopper, on account of the shorter antennae and that it was around during the day. Or was it holed up until nightfall? I am never absolutely sure when trying to identify insects or birds for that matter, so answers on a postcard, all you entomologists out there.
I have carried out my annual roof inspection and attempted to cleanse our chimney by means of the highly sophisticated technique of attaching an old axe head to a long piece of rope and rattling it down the pipe. Needless to say it got stuck and I had to dismantle the pipe with sooty consequences inside the house – precisely the mess I was trying to avoid in the first place.
But my couple of hours on the roof had other worth. There were 18 cracked tiles that needed repairing, two footballs to retrieve and a loose cap to one of the chimneys that could have toppled in the next gust.
I took my time. I always do when I’m up there. You get a different perspective of familiar ground. James Taylor sings of the roof being his place of peace and solace – alright, a roof terrace with stair access, but you know what I mean – and I understand what how he feels. When I lived at Barley Cottage overlooking Aldborough’s Green, I’d find any excuse on a still summer’s day to check the pointing on the old stacks, then sit on the ridge and watch the clouds.
