Between bouts of wind and rain, forays out reveal the inexorable decline towards midwinter. Rare streaks of brilliance above the skyline of Viverdon Down reflect the sun’s disappearance by 4pm and, at midday, steep north-facing ground remains in shadow. Here, around home, on this part-wooded southern slope, berries of spindle, snowberry and cotoneaster may last until Christmas, but, more than a fortnight ago, a gang of fieldfares outnumbered defensive mistle thrushes to raid the plentiful crop of haws and holly berries.
In the orchard containing my brother-in-law’s first-grafted trees of historic local varieties, lichen-covered branches are bare of leaves. The latest apples to fall, like Tommy Knight, Long Keeper, Claygate Pearmain and Winter Green, roll downslope towards bramble thickets to form yellow and red drifts of sweet-smelling, fermenting fruit, a feast for birds before worms drag the remnants into the earth. Piles of pruned-off twigs become orange overnight, bark gnawed off by rabbits; mistletoe has yet to spread from The Rattler to other trees. The last apple to be picked and stored (Reinette de Brucbrucks) should keep firm and unblemished until next year.
Adjoining pastures remain verdant in the mild weather but cattle are back in covered yards, feeding on home-produced haylage until spring. Gateways into the few cultivated fields are rutted and puddled, and horses, kept at livery, poach the sodden ground. A tall spruce, felled from an outgrown plantation, was transported by a neighbouring farmer to the village hall and decorated with lights.
Runoff rushes down narrow lanes between shoals of leaves that also accumulate in hedge footings and are trodden into muddy bridleways; in the hollow way beside Nanie Rowe’s Wood, leaf mould seems to gleam purple against the lurid green of mosses, upright ferns and shining pennywort. Closer to the river, opposite shadowy woodland and above Cotehele’s roaring millstream, pale sunlight glistens on droplets around hazel catkins and fluffy garlands of old man’s beard. Nearby, within the National Trust’s mother orchard, a few late cider apples cling to branches above trunks encircled by dropped, bitter-sweet and sharp-tasting fruit.
