17 September 2022
The End of Summer Signals Acorns and Berries in the Wood
As autumn begins to set in, Axel has come across lots of berries and nuts on the trees and thorns in the wood.
It’s the end of summer now here in the wood in September. We have had the first real bits of torrential rain (I got soaked through as my waterproofs were not good enough for hours of non-stop hard rain), the groundwater is at the surface, the streams are full, and the waterfall is noisy.
The birds have come to the end of their breeding season and some of the migrants have started to leave. But there are still quite a lot of butterflies and insects buzzing around. Frogs are migrating to their breeding pools – I saw several the other day.
Everywhere there are deep, verdant greens. We’ve never quite been without water here, even if some of the streams were low and more of a trickle than a flow.
What I notice most are the berries and nuts everywhere?
The bright orange-red of mountain ash, the deep black of the blackberries, then lots of greens – hazel nuts, acorns from the two types of oak and the tiniest of cute apples on the old crabapple trees on a clawdd.
We’ve had a heavy mast or crop of acorns and hazelnuts this year; I reckon it’s because of the relatively dry summer which means that you get a heavy set of fruits. My dad used to say that a lots of berries meant a sharp winter, but we’ll see.
