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From the studio window, 6 p.m. |
 The
golden hornet crab apple has lost its leaves during the
last week but is still clinging onto a good crop of apples. These are
often ignored by the birds until they've begun to turn brown after the
first frosts. Perhaps this year the squirrels, which are now regular visitors
to the garden, will eat them before they go to waste.
 There
are no longer ponies in the meadow. There was a lot of ragwort
this summer - there seems to be more of it about in general, on road verges
and waste ground - and the people who rented the field have taken their
ponies elsewhere. I'll miss them, but hopefully the meadow will recover
and turn green again. This year it got muddy and well trampled at the
bottom end, where the ponies were fed, and this may have given the ragwort
the chance to invade open patches of ground.
  The
cover star of Rough Patch (left) is lurking in the shadows by
the hedge.
'I've got that new wheelbarrow for you in the outhouse!'
said Barbara's mum, 'If you'd collected it, you could have had that on
the cover.'
'No!' I explained, 'it wouldn't be the same if it was a
new barrow: it has to be rusty and battered to go with the Rough Patch
ambience!' 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk
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