Typically I spend a month in the UK, then a month in Dubai, and so on. This provides a useful brake on over-hasty plans and an interesting fast-forward focus on how the grounds change through the year. A patch of flower bed that was green when I last saw it is a sea of yellow inula magnifica (fleabane) when I return; the honeysuckle which was just getting into its stride when I last left has now tripled in volume and forms a fragrant cloud over an old outbuilding. Wary blue tit and willow tit mothers darting into nests now have their entourages of hungry, scruffy adolescents, rebellious but not quite independent.
Plants have self seeded everywhere: baby foxgloves are popping up in the drive, and the tactile silvery rosettes of young verbascum have made light work of the gravel near the woodshed.
And that September purpose. So much coming and going, everywhere - squirrels raiding the oak tree, tawny owls calling for mates, the bigger bumble bees criss-crossing the remaining flowers - mornings are sharpening, school is back and everyone has that urge to fill, store, hoard, prepare. We lose that feeling when we live in cities, that ancient awareness that colder, harder times are on their way, and it is lovely to feel it again here.
There are many cliches about rural life, a change of pace, a different attitude, and yet so much of this small island is now in reality glorified commuter belt that I am not sure how much country civility is truly sustained. Here life is indubitably slower: never before have I enjoyed cheery chats with the fiercest looking white van online delivery drivers, the post men and ladies, and indeed anyone else who makes it down our drive either to bring us something or do something for us. It is of course not all ruddy faced jollies - all that cheery chat fuels a merciless gossip network, no less vast than the mycelium strands underpinning our trees‘ networks.
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