A fine meal from an autumnal bounty

“LAZY autumn days in all their glory...” was a line of a song I heard as a youth.

Hazy, autumn days is what we’ve been having these last two glorious weeks, when rain seems almost a memory. There’s little ‘lazy’ about autumn for the mammals and birds that put away stores for winter. Squirrels hoard nuts, wood mice hoard beech mast, and jays bury acorns to be dug up in hard times.

We hoard, too; the fine Cep mushrooms we picked in Kerry a few weeks ago are now preserved as dry, white strips in glass jars, stored in the kitchen cupboards. Blackberries and crab apples have been turned to jam or jelly. There are still some blackberries on the briars, especially sweet and juicy, albeit smaller than those of summer. The hollys, rowans and hawthorns are red with berries, and the branches of the blackthorns thick with sloes.