Weatherwise comments: the staple of British small talk...

The weather is once again doing its duty by providing a topic for conversation. After days and days of a warmish, clinging, damp grey murk, when the sun didn't once show its face from dawn till dusk - depressing, but hardly worth comment - we can once again exchange weatherwise remarks as we pass each other in the lane:
"It's turned chilly suddenly, hasn't it?"
"Yes, we have to get dressed up warmly now."
"Still, I much prefer it to what we had before. I'd rather have it really cold and dry than all that miserable damp stuff."
"Oh, so would I. It was so depressing."
"And now everything's drying out, we can scuff in the leaves again!"
This last being my contribution. After all, it wouldn't be autumn without scuffing in heaps of brightly-coloured fallen leaves, would it?

Mission accomplished!

Old straw being emptied onto the 'modern waggon'

Yesterday I went out on a mission to take some photos of our local thatchers at work; and I succeeded. As my mother said, thatching is obviously one of those rare 'outside' building trades that doesn't mind being done in the damp! It also seems to be one of the few trades to have changed little since Milly-Molly-Mandy's day,  back in the 1920's. 
The ladders are metal now of course, and the 'wagon' in which the fresh straw arrives, and the old is taken away, is also metal and powered by an engine not a horse; but other than that, the differences are few...

"And then they put one ladder so that they could climb up to the roof, and another ladder with hooks on the end so that they could climb up on the roof... and [Father] and Uncle set to work busily to mend the hole in the thatch as well as they could, till Mr Critch the Thatcher could come."

        -  From 'Milly-Molly-Mandy Helps to Thatch a Roof' by Joyce Lankester Brisley

 

It's autumn, autumn, autumn...

"Bright yellow, red and orange, the leaves come down in hosts;

The trees are Indian princes, but soon they'll turn to ghosts;

The scanty pears and apples hang russet on the bough;

It's autumn, autumn, autumn late,

'Twill soon be winter now."

                            

- from William Allingham's "Robin Redbreast"

Shades of rumplestiltskin...

Lots of cottages around our village are being re-thatched at the moment. Often on my walks down the lane I see the thatchers out on the roofs, but yesterday, as I went to visit a nonagenarian neighbour (sadly rapidly dying of cancer), I saw them on the ground, stacking up their bundles of fresh straw in preparation for taking them up the ladders. Soon another cottage's grey, mangy mop will be turned to gold!

Guess which season...

This morning, when went to put on my garden clogs in preparation for feeding the birds, the big toe of my right foot hit against something hard; on closer investigation it turned out to be a hibernating snail.
In the first shock of my surprise I threw it out on the grass, but then I thought that was a bit mean, so I rescued it and placed it carefully in a dark place under our outside office. (My mother says I am a softie.)

But not everything in nature is preparing for winter. Our japonica bush is bearing fruits and blossom at the same time. Who says global warming is a myth?