End of Summer

It's already, rather suddenly, more than just the end of summer. The turn in the quality of the light and the shift in the atmosphere was well underway in the later days of August but the days of sunshine are defiantly now in full retreat. The bushes are thick with blackberrys, I collected a jam jar full of sloes on Sunday and there are even shiny conkers on the ground next to the butcher's. I can't stop my bonkers bantham chicken escaping, through the windblown branches of the tree that protrudes from the run, as she thinks she has a clutch of eggs to brood under a bush in the garden but she is sorely mistaken as we have no boy chickens. The morning is dark today and my daughter stood in the garden a full 20 minutes early waiting expectantly for the school bus on her second ever day at High School, tiny and perfectly uniformed under a new umbrella in the rain. I then cycled to work and got the first wet shoes of the autumn but am still hopeful for a bit more sun as September progresses.