Tuesday 3 September 2013

The discoveries of late summer…



 
September is upon us and the school year has begun again.    As sessions get underway in schools for me it’s a time of year when lots of reflection seems to happen.
Despite it being very (very) many years ago, I still have the feelings of being at school myself and the sense of “new beginnings” – with new pencil cases and school books.   There’s something “in the air” as summer draws to a close and autumn starts to make its presence felt (“back-endish” as a friend of mine would say!).

 
I love September, the temperature is usually wonderful for lots of long hours of work outside, there are (hopefully) berries in abundance and nuts and seeds are beginning to be very apparent.   It also feels a wonderful time to light fires and share stories, to gather natural objects for creating images and of course to find ways to make use of blackberries and all the other hedgerow abundance…

 
Blackberries must be one of the first ways many people start to forage for wild food (perhaps its also the only foraging that many people do).  They are a wonderful food – easy to find and as long as you follow a few simple tips (e.g.: don’t pick from road verges because of traffic fumes / residue and always pick above “dog-wee” height!) then you can have a wonderful supply of fruit to cook and create with.   The berries, leaves and canes of brambles make a good natural dye... 

 

 Apparently it’s also a cure for a child with whopping cough if you pass them (several times) through an arch made where a blackberry shoot has rooted naturally at either end…  My wonderful book “Discovering the Folklore of Plants” (Shire) says the patient should be eating bread and butter whilst this happens! The bread and butter are then fed to a passing animal or bird and the cough would disappear…   The book also mentions an old tradition that blackberries should not be picked after 29 September (loads of time to go then), Michaelmas Day, because “the Devil variously ‘waves his club over them’, ‘spits on them’ or ‘curses them’ "…

Last year the children I work with were so excited by all the blackberries in the hedgerows around schools – they used them as paints as well as eating them in various recipes (and of course tasting them straight from the bush too).  They were transfixed and as these were inner-city children it’s a wonderful reminder that hedgerow foraging is just as much an option in urban areas.

 
It was really interesting to see some of the same children looking for the berries again earlier this summer – they were confused about why there were none: so it was great to be able to look at the flowers on the brambles and talk about how these would turn into the blackberries (with the help of bees too). 

 

The rowans and hawthorns here are laden with berries at the moment.   Gathering the hedgerow harvest is a wonderful thing and it also provides an important connection with the past I think.   This goes hand in hand with the sense that the nights will soon start to draw in and a desire to stock the store cupboards (my freezer!) with foraged goodies.
 
 

 

There are many exciting mini-beasts to spot  - and some stunning dragonflies on the wing (we would love it if some laid eggs in our pond in the Discovery Garden at Dunkirk).
 
 
There are so many interesting natural textures to explore and intriguing sights spring up - such as various fungi, which really intrigue the children.

 
There is much seed to be gathered and stored (so making labels and decorating paper bags for this is very much on the agenda over the next few weeks).   We planted lots of wildflower seed this year and that seems to have done really well (possibly we have the right soil for this in the Discovery Garden) and we aim to collect as much seed as we can.  We’ll also store any beans and peas that have “gone over” so that we can plant them next year.

The light is also really special in September, the trees and hedges are laden with leaves still but the angle of the sunlight drops at certain times of day - so that long shadows are cast and the sunlight glistens on golden seed-heads and through leaves... 

 

  

   The sounds of the natural world change so much throughout the year.  In September the birds begin to gather and flock and call in a different way (although only very recently I watched recently-fledged sparrows being fed in my garden) and I’m always very aware of the absence of the swifts, who left much earlier in August.  


I adore autumn – but this part of the summer feels really special; summer is still here but not for too much longer, you want to grab every moment of being outside, of gathering fruit and vegetables, of soaking in the heat of the sun… of making paint with blackberries and watching the house martins swooping overhead…  

 
 




 

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