...that bearing boughs may live

And so autumn is slowly ripening the fruit of summer's labour. I found this bounteous tree in the grounds of The National Trust's Chastleton House. A moment in between drenching rain showers took me off into the wilds of Oxfordshire with my oldest friend. We have known each other since we were seven years old and have been aspiring, in our tastes, to be middle aged ever since we met. We are long used to being the youngest people wherever we go. So, on Saturday we went for a hearty pub lunch and gentle stroll at Great Tew and then on to Chastleton House for an idyllic afternoon spent wandering the grounds and eating the mulberries.

Chastleton House

A chocolate box cottage in Great Tew

If only wild music did 'burthen every bough' as Shakespeare declared in Sonnet 102. For if it did then the fruit trees at Chastleton House would be truly raucous. Mulberries, plums, apples, quinces and even peaches are scattered throughout the grounds making me wonder why we import fruit at all. I look forward to late summer every year for so many different reasons but to hear my mother (as I did today) say she is going out for damsons is absolutely one of them; as I know that on a cold winter's night I will go home to a jar of her damson jam. Spreading it thickly on toast, I will think of the late summer sun and my mother's jam making magic combining to produce the best comfort food that you could wish for when the boughs are bare and the bounty of summer seems a lifetime away.

For the rain it raineth every day

Well, this is the view from my (newly finished) study window this morning which immediately brought dear old Feste to mind. Summer seems to have scurried off and left us between seasons. While I wait for the burnished bronze of autumn to sweep in and save us from limbo I am reading three books, fuelled by copious amounts of warming tea and rather too much cake. The trouble is that I need to focus on one as I keep flitting between them.

I have started and am really enjoying The Lessons by Naomi Alderman, not least because it is set in Oxford so it is helping me get my bearings in this new city. I am still reading Jane Eyre, which is perfect to read on a grey day as it is steeped in grey. Grey people, grey places, grey plot, grey, grey, grey. And finally I am reading An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, which is also set in Oxford and is great bed time reading.

I am off in search of a hearty pub lunch and, hopefully, a fire to sit beside!