A Drive in November

Today we had to go to an RSPCA home between Weathersfield and Sible Hedingham. It was a bright, autumn afternoon and everywhere we looked we saw pheasants, pheasants in fields, ditches and road edges.

One pheasant winged its way across in front of the car not two feet from the windscreen, long tail feathers streaming out behind and absurdly small wings outstretched.

We watched another beautifully and brightly coloured male in a prettily wooded turning, by a bend in the road guarding his harem of five plain, dull-brown females.
Partridges were also prolific hopping over hedges, disappearing into hedge bottoms, hiding in ditches and running along road edges.

Passing a heron motionless on the roadside, he turned his head to watch us, I felt I could have stroked his back as we passed, so close were we – and he, totally unfazed, just stood and stared.

Leaves
Tugged and blown
Scurrying
Across the windswept road
Like little brown mice
Gold autumn hedges and gold sun-reflected cloud edges
Sun and smatterings of rain pattering against the windscreen
Once hail and briefly snow patterned our visions

We drive down puddled, pot-holed, leaf-covered one-car roads with grassy center track and trees tickling the windows on either side, suddenly the trees and hedges ended. In a field just ahead with his big, white-patched ears was a hare creeping and nibbling, we pulled into the field edge and watched him, he continued feeding heedless of our watchful nosiness.

We crossed fords and crept along flooded roads, fascinated by waterlogged fields, frequented by opportunistic ducks.

In a hollow where two fields met we saw a deep flood – more like a lake, two herons stood sentinel at the edge and a little way up the incline were a family of swans, two adults and two brown almost-grown immature, while tucked in the centre of the swan family was a lone black, beige and white canada goose.

Time was marching on, and we could now see the most wonderful skies gold edged, pink fluffy clouds opposite gold and turquoise sunsets. We watched sheep grazing on green hills rising up from even greener fields, cows watched us with their soft brown eyes, their heads often lowered huddled together for warmth under the sheltering trees.

We laughed at pheasant roadrunners rushing by, stepping high, wondered at a lone rabbit – a rare sight, where were the others?

Saw many kestrel hovering overhead, wings outstretched, hanging in the air by an invisible thread that wasn’t even there.

We drove on through the afternoon and into the fading light, before arriving home we bought produce at garden gates: cabbage, carrots, swede, sprouts and wallflower plants to remind us next spring of this memorable afternoon. All the produce was wonderfully fresh and at bargain prices – but the real joy was in the nature and beauty of the English countryside.

We passed a field black with rooks while from the ever-darkening sky hundreds more were flying in from every angle.

The sky had again changed and as the road twisted and turned we faced enormous deep pink, turning red cloud mountains, between sightings of the western horizon which was on fire.

Drove down narrow steeply-sided roads bounded by ages old oak trees.

Saw kestrels hovering overhead,
A lone rabbit,
Herons, swans, a canada goose,
Partidges,
A hare,
Floods and ducks,
Smatterings of rain,
Patterings of hail,
Patternings of snow,
Red, yellow, orange, brown and gold leaves,
This is autumn in the Colne Valley on the Essex/Suffolk border in England.

Chilly November

Today is bright and sunny although it’s cold outside, it doesn’t have yesterday’s biting wind which coupled with no sun, made yesterday weather-wise a very unpleasant day, when Mike picked up Rick at 3:20pm the temperature gauge outside Tesco showed 5 degrees.

The trees are almost bare now, but the lawn is dressed very prettily in reds, yellows, browns, oranges and golds – and the blackbirds are very busy overturning the lawn’s leafy covering looking for fat worms and insects.

There are still many beautiful flowers out in the garden: a dark black/red clematis and a beautiful pale pink one with a deep pink stripe down the center of each petal, pink white and maroon chrysanthemums, sweetly scented clusters of mid-pink viburnum bodnantense and pink white and red roses, of course there are still many bushes laden with brilliant shiny berries red orange and yellow and the malus tree branches are heavily weighted with fruit, the berries and the malus fruit will keep the birds fed for a while.

Here and there, the last leaves dance on the bare branches twirling and spinning merrily, soon a southern gust of wind will catch them unawares and they too will be part of the lawn’s rich carpet.

Yesterday, returning home from the hospital we turned our back on the motorway and instead traveled home the ‘old way’. The roads were narrower, slower, prettier, and often tree-lined. We passed many parks and commons with lakes full of wild fowl and numerous gardens some already tidied and put to bed for the winter, others like ours, rather wild and unkempt, but havens for wildlife with birds in them from morning to night.

Best of all we journeyed through High Beach, a well-known, naturally beautiful area, acres and acres of beech trees most of the leaves had fallen; the roads were narrow with no footpaths. And the crisp autumn leaves littered the roadside and swept away into an orange carpet on the forest floor. It was breathtakingly beautiful, the sun’s rays shining through the bare branches gave the leafy carpet a red glow. (High Beach is part of Epping Forest, an ancient forest where Queen Elizabeth I (154x-1603) used to hunt for boar and venison, a cruel and outmoded sport now thankfully becoming more and more frowned upon. Queen Elizabeth I’s hunting lodge is still standing in Epping Forest.)