A Country Girl at Heart.

I am a Country Girl at heart.  I lived the first twenty years or so in the Lincolnshire countryside but then moved eventually into the delightful semi-country feel of Lichfield - a cathedral city and a sort of 'half way house' before my baptism of fire - Wolverhampton, where we lived for almost twenty years.

Now I have lived here in North Yorkshire for more than thirty years - until my farmer died really out in the countryside but since then right on the edge of a small country Dales town.   And I mean 'on the edge' - climb over my back garden wall, walk over three fields and you would arrive at our old farm - now split into two and quite unrecognisable.

But although I have my garden, live opposite a piece of ground - a building plot but undeveloped so that it is a lovely space, cared for by the owner, so strimmed regularly and every couple of years the three or four trees are cut back into 'shrubs' - it is not quite the same as 'proper' country.

Imagine my pleasure when yesterday my dear friends rang to say they would come and take me for a drive.   If you read me regularly you may remember they did the same in the Spring - just as the Hawthorn (May) Blossom was coming out and the lambs were gambolling in the Dales fields.   I was for that hour of the drive in a totally different (Blissful) world.   And so it was yesterday.

The opposite end of the year.   Trees still in leaf but looking weary .   No lambs now but fields full of fully grown sheep (about to be 'tupped' anytime soon.)   The grass, after a very wet month, green and lush (and third crop silage finished).

As T drove along the country roads - well you could almost call them lanes - plenty of polite driving letting the other fellow go first sort of stuff, very little in the way of flowers on the verges except patches of yellow rattle here and there (that plant so hated and despised by farmers (with good reason) but so beloved - even craved - by the grass rivulet moth) the thing which gave me the most pleasure - and something I haven't seen for a few years was the turning of the hawthorn berries.

In some sheltered places hawthorn trees in the undulating grassland fields were covered in bright red berries.  In other places - in more open land - the hawthorn trees showed brown - berries 'on the turn'.

Here and there bright rose hips told of the beautiful wild English rose earlier in the year. (and always reminds me of 'Rose Hip Syrup' - I remember giving a spoonful to my son when he was a young child.)  Not sure that it exists these days.

We called to see a friend and sat in the garden for a while in the sun.  A Victoria plum tree was dropping its fruit onto the grass (they were ripe and absolutely delicious (I ate 6).   Word had got around because every Red Admiral butterfly in the neighbourhood was there for a 'plumfest'. 

I was returned home replete with Victoria sandwich topped with strawberries and cream (and those plums of course)- and with memories of our glorious Dales countryside.  Nowhere else on earth more beautiful.   Thank you T and S. 

This morning, for only the second time this year - I walked round a short circuit of the estate.  An ash tree I passed was dropping its leaves on the grass and on the footpath.   Yes it is Autumn (meterologically speaking) - and September has obliged us by giving us a few days of glorious  weather.   Enjoy it.