Autumn has been coming on for a while. Even in mid August the signs were all there: colder nights and early morning dew; blackberries deepening and swelling; the sycamore seeds poised for launch. Soon it was the turn of the rosebay willowherb that had bolted through the summer like a lanky teenager. Its perfection past, now it was going to seed, along with the creeping and spear thistles; the architectural spires and precision points gave way to softness as they all shed that downy fluff that you just have to pull off and hold. In our back garden the resident blackbird, distinguishable by his white tail feathers, has made himself scarce. I tell my youngest daughter that Morris (as he’s been named) has gone off to fatten up in the woods, and have a little holiday just like we do. ‘He doesn’t need to do that, Mummy. We’ve got enough plums and apples falling here. And the elderberries.’ (Jemima is a natural forager and has developed a taste for elderberries – in fact, for anything she can find to eat outside. She picked at the elderflowers and ate them, then watched the green berries daily, willing them to turn purple and capsize.)

‘When’s he coming back?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m sure he will,’ I tell her. ‘I hope we can recognise him though, he will have moulted. Some people say this makes them hide away.’

‘Like a bad hair day?’

‘Kind of, but worse. A bad feather day could affect his flying. It could make him feel unsafe, more exposed. But you don’t need to worry about him, he can take care of himself.’

You can’t blame the garden birds for wanting a taste of the wild; for some, of course, our limited patch is only ever just a small part of their feeding ground. The woods and hedgerows are providing an abundance of fruit this year, and the attraction is obvious. By the start of September the sloes are plump and blue already, and the blackberries have been burgeoning for weeks, at times dissolving on the brambles, being too plentiful to be gathered in. Human efforts at blackberry picking seem to be half-hearted this year (my family aside). It must have something to do with how August has dripped its way into an early wet September, the autumnal damp well-established before its rightful time. The badgers in the woods are not sick of blackberries yet – their little latrine pits contain piles of purple dung, full of the tell-tale seeds.

The dog needs his walks despite the rain and so we continue to haunt the landscape. We’re out in fine drizzle once again and I can’t help thinking how quiet the place is now. I share the village with more than two thousand other people, and the woods with just a few; these days I can go for a whole walk without seeing a soul. I think most people are lying when they say they walk their dog at least once a day. But it’s the birdsong I’m missing. It’s understood that birds sing less in the rain, and then of course their seasonal need to sing has past – having found a territory and had their young, their year is complete. H. G. Alexander suggests that blackbirds will sing more in the rain, but presumably not when they’ve stopped the choral ritual anyway. That aside, I know there is a beauty in quietness and I need to retrain my ear.

I have noticed another change inside these woods – the trees seem to be turning faster here than on the outside. I appreciate the gloom could make the leaves show up more when they come to rest on the dark floor, and yet I think there is a little more to it. This is no vast wood – in places it’s little more than a modest strip of broadleaf woodland between fields, just twenty metres across. Daylight can filter in through the canopy overhead and dapple the floor with sunshine. It creeps in from the outer edges, too. But perhaps the trees here register the arrival of autumn before the rest, for some are contained within the canopy and have far less exposure to sunlight.

There is a distinct smell in the air now that I haven’t smelt for almost a year. It’s hard to locate exactly – I don’t know if it’s the damp rotting wood, the overripe fruit, or the moss that’s growing more brightly and more densely as it soaks up the rain. I suspect it’s a combination, and will intensify with the fungi that grow around here and the soon-to-be rotting leaves. When autumn is over there will be a new harvest of sorts, as the wild flowers begin working their way up through this newly replenished soil; old leaf-fall provides the nourishment now, but in time this year’s nutrients will be recycled into leaf and flower.

I head home feeling that the woodland harvest is just beginning, with our own ingathering a little ahead of nature’s own yield. In the Celtic calendar August marked the start of autumn, with three months of ‘Harvest’. Perhaps this is a more accurate way to look at it, for our own harvest-time is just a small part of the story, and bound up in a delicate balance extending far beyond the edges of the field.

Caroline Greville, 2016