What a Difference…

…. A Day Makes. It’s a great song, I’m particularly a fan of the late, great Esther Phillips version, it’s a Northern Soul thing from my youth. It’s still one of those songs that I hear now and then which has the ability to transport me back to a particular location and a long gone friend. It was a song that defined a particular passage in time which I will never forget.

That’s not the emphasis of today’s tale for all of that, no, I was struck by the change in the weather overnight and popped out to record what, if anything, was left of the current harvesting operations that had been so evidently in full swing yesterday and the day before. The answer this morning was an emphatic….nothing. Fields that had until very recently been heavy with the wheat are now empty, devoid of anything but the stubble and the tracks of the machinery, in most places even the bales have been gathered in.

Stood in the middle of the empty field under the dark rain laden clouds I was reminded that Autumn is on it’s way, there was such a marked difference in the weather this morning. I’m not complaining mind you, there is no more beautiful a season than Autumn. There is still light and warmth to enjoy but there is also the promise of cooler, crisper mornings, incredible cloud inversions in the valleys hereabouts, the turning colours of the leaves and the wild fruit in the hedgerows. It’s a time of plenty and holds such promise. Even the wet, windy days have a richness of colour, a fragrance all of their own, I can’t wait for the first ploughing of the fields, the damp fresh smell of the rich earth turned skyward and waiting for the planting cycle to begin again.

No doubt there will be times when I shall write about the incessant Dorset drizzle, rain that sleets sideways across the hedgerows and open fields, but even on those occasions and while I am apparently complaining, there is a beauty in some of the silent solitude that such a day can bring to the countryside. Bring on the Autumn I say, I for one can’t wait.