As the forecasts predict snow in the North, I'm wondering whether it is still Autumn. Snow is rare before Christmas, specially her among the seven hills of Sheffield, or the sheltered valleys of the Derbyshire Peak District, so I am going to assume that Autumn still has a way to go, and this is just a wrinkle in the weather.
In this blog I'm including a short piece I wrote in my diary during the Autumn of 2018, when we lived high on a Pennine hill, where Autumn was the time of leaves:
"Autumn here sometimes brings surprises, but the overwhelming feature of Autumn is the leaves!
The beech hedge begins its winter-long drift of bright brown leaves, the last of which will wait until pushed out by next year’s buds. The big sycamore tree stands firm whatever the weather, now dropping its leathery brown leaves to collect in deep drifts in corners, remaining for the whole winter as hiding places where toads, beetles and other small creatures can shelter from the weather. These leaves appear to be waterproof, only rotting slowly in the rain, frost and snow yet to come. They seem intent on blocking every drain in the yard, joining with the beech leaves to wheedle their way into the gaps in the long drains that run along the yard, and block the trough that carries water from the fields to the drain under the farmhouse. These beech leaves don’t only come from our own trees, they seem to blow right along the line of hills, tumbling along the packhorse trail and through the grasses, bent on collecting on our yard.
All the way down the lane, the beech trees grow tall and stately, with their smooth, greenish/grey trunks rising thirty feet and more above the stream deep in the v-shaped cleft that drops from the lane at the edge of our fields. I am amazed that these trees can grow so tall, hanging onto the steep slopes of leaf mould with their roots like knuckled green fingers gripping the ground. In some places as you walk down the lane, you can see that they must have
seeded among outcrops of the local stone breaking the soft, leaf moulded surface, revealing the greens, oranges, steely greys and creamy whites of our underlying rocks. The beeches cling to these until the groups of trees now resemble bonsai groups. Each of these giants has the potential to produce up to 7 million leaves every year – seven million small, tough water-repellent sheets of cellulose, many of which are carried across the landscape throughout the autumn and winter and into the following spring. They float and gently spin down from their twigs, to fall and lie in drifts sing where they are smashed by passing vehicle tyres. The rest provide a slip-sliding blanket, dry on the surface, but treacherous underneath, where the leaves glide over each other as if covered in soap. We remove the leaves each November, often on Remembrance Sunday, when we work with our neighbours to sweep and scoop from the top to the bottom of the lane thousands of those seven million leaves from each beech tree. And those are the ones that fall!
A group of hazel bushes hang their branches over the wall at the bottom of the lane, and drop their satin-sheened green nuts, still in frilly husks, onto the path for woodland creatures to collect. Berries hang from branches and bushes, deep red haws, bright scarlet rose hips, translucent berries of the geulder rose, late brambles and rowans just waiting for the raiding beaks of redwing and fieldfares flying through the hedgerows and fields in great marauding bands, leaving trees and bushes bare.
Many more evade our sweeping, remaining on the trees to fall throughout the winter. I don’t know if beech leaves are especially resistant to water, frost, snow and rain, but they do seem to be a persistent feature of this area. The crispy brown leaves are everywhere, throughout autumn and winter, and even into the spring. During the last few days I have hauled them out of the yard drain where they clump together in a heavy wet mass; I have picked them out of the branches of our Christmas tree where they have collected during the 48 hours the tree spent outside the shed before we brought it inside; I have removed them from the hall carpet where they lie, having blown in through even the smallest crack in the front door. And today, when we walked carefully over the icy stones of the packhorse trail, there they were, trapped in the transparent ice, which was flowing down the path, as if turned in an instant from liquid to solid by some passing witch’s spell!
From late summer, through the winter and even into the spring, they wheedle and dance their way into every crack and cranny, filling the slots in the metal drain covers that run up the yard, where they are a perfect fit, and slip in to make a closely packed, leathery, tight-fitting wad, blocking the drain completely and filling the trough and its drains on the other side of the back yard, so that during periods of heavy rainfall, they can seal the yard in a watertight box, which rapidly fills with water, a surprising sort of flood, considering the altitude."
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