We have started cutting the meadows. The Tump and the Tynings baled first for hay at the beginning of the month. Nineteen bales this year compared to last year’s forty six, where the meadows ran thin after a long, dry spring and, until just this week, an endurance without rain.  The dry weather made for easy strimming and so we started on the banks in front of the house, whilst waiting for our man who has the kit and the courage to cut the precipitous meadow field behind the house. It is an inevitable process, which I always find sad, for I like the light and the life in the meadows even when they are spent, But slowly, and it is time now, we work our way back to the smooth contours of the land, leaving the steepest slopes as sanctuary for wildlife and enjoying the flush of autumnal regrowth that comes with the cool and the dew and the penetrating rains.

The Ditch we leave until December and only cut the areas where bulb planting is planned to bulk up the snakeshead fritillaries in the meantime. This wetland is still brimming with life and the last flush of hemp-agrimony and loosestrife. The Eupatorium cannabinum arrived here on its own once we fenced off the banks of the Ditch and let it grow long. First one clump and then seedlings from the mother colony. Some much further down the ditch and a fair number up in the garden where its windblown seed must have moved uphill on an easterly. I monitored the seedlings, with their distinctive, hemp-like foliage and hearty root system, as I could see they were going to be trouble in the garden without the usual competition to keep them in check. Flowering in their first year, like the pioneers they are cut out to be, they were deflowered to prevent them from seeding and moved in the autumn to the margins of the pond to join the other natives there.