by Judith Stafford | Nov 6, 2020 | Into the Woods
Autumn in the Woods I love autumn. I love the smell, the colours of the leaves, the way the light falls. There is a lovely smell in the air which reminds me of bonfires and wet leaves. What I really love is watching squirrels rushing around gathering nuts, they really make me smile. I’m not so keen on the cold wind and the long dark nights but I am learning to live with them. After all, apart from moving to another country where it is summer, what can I do about it? Usually September has reasonable weather which makes it easier to enjoy stomping among the fallen leaves. Although they don’t usually come down in great quantities until the end of October. This month often has sunny days too. But by November and Bonfire night, when the clocks have gone back it really does feel like winter is on its way. The autumn woods offer a bounty of berries and fruit for us to harvest. Blackberries, crab apples, elderberries, rose hips, hawthorns, sloes and so many mushrooms. Much as I would love to, I don’t collect mushrooms, it is hard to tell which are poisonous and which are edible, so I leave that to the experts. But I do collect sloes, for sloe gin; rosehips for rosehip syrup and elderberries to make an elderberry tonic. You can make a ketchup out of hawthorns, but I haven’t done so – yet! Autumn is also a great time to collect mushrooms. But only if you know what you are doing. Poisonous fungi grow in with edible ones and look very similar...
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