October

Truffles and the last of the hedgerow

Appears in

Published 2011

About

BARE BRANCHES OF BIRCH and willow, pale and spidery against the dark mass of the evergreens, reveal peat-darkened pools in the wildwood. In the woodland close to the house, leaves of scarlet and bronze are whipped into whirlpools by the wind. The swallows are gone and a few late-hatched butterflies with tattered wings tuck themselves into cracks in the stone walls of the barns to wait for spring.

Jessie, Bonnie and Harper are back for the autumn half-term holiday, just in time to gather the last of the berries – bramble and rowan – from the lane that links Brynmerheryn to the road that crosses the moorland. An excursion to inspect the beech woods around the burnt-out mansion at Hafod – source of Monica’s gleanings when furnishing Brynmerheryn in the 1930s, including tiles for the glass passage – yields the last of the year’s crop of penny buns (porcini mushrooms) to dry for the store cupboard.