I can hear the distant, angry growl of a leaf blower, carried on the wind, nature’s leaf blower. Otherwise, it’s quiet here in the garden, sheltered by a high hedge, raking fallen leaves, one of autumn’s contemplative tasks, reviving memories of watching for first signs of their unfurling in spring, and sitting in their shade during summer’s heatwaves.
An ever-changing palette of colours settles on the path: today, burnt orange and cinnamon shades of Amelanchier, crimson spindle, yellow hawthorn, scarlet cherry foliage. What to do with them? There are too many to consign to the compost heaps. Send them away in the garden waste wheelie bin? Corral them in a chicken wire cage until they eventually become crumbly leaf mould? There’s another option: raking them back under the trees and hedge, into the flowerbeds, closing a loop in the cycle of life. Six years of doing just that has produced some wonderful displays of woodland toadstools. First to show this year were clusters of lilac-tinted wood blewits (Lepista nuda), followed by sepia boletes (Xerocomellus porosporus) with domed caps cracked like crazy paving. Pallid, warty puffballs are shouldering aside layers of decay, ready to shed their spores.
But the immediate beneficiaries, in these dwindling days of autumn before hard frosts arrive, will be legions of overwintering invertebrates: ground beetles, ladybirds, shield bugs, moth caterpillars and spiders, seeking shelter under the blanket of dry, brittle leaves. Deeper in the stratigraphy of fallen foliage, where previous years’ mouldering leaves meld into mineral soil, lies the province of moisture-loving earthworms, centipedes, millipedes, slugs, springtails and fly larvae.
A blackbird is watching me from the garden fence. When my back is turned, he’ll swoop down to fossick among the newly raked leaves, hurling them aside with an air of furious exasperation, seeking hidden morsels. By dusk the border will be pock-marked with cavities excavated with his beak, and some of the leaves will be back on the path. It’s a pantomime played out with the garden blackbirds through autumn and winter, even during snowfall.
Creating this woodland habitat of humus-rich soil has enriched autumn from a melancholy season of regret at summer’s passing into one of anticipation and delight.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
