Entering Autumn

Friday, 11 September

It is achingly beautiful this morning in the Perche. As you can see from the above photo, the sky is a true blue; as you can sense, the air is crisply autumnal. Rain has fallen enough in the last fortnight to generate green shoots amidst the downtrodden brown. The wind is on hold, and the dew has once again wet the toes of my shoes. The songbirds have returned, more chamber music than the symphonies in spring, but what joy to hear their chirps after the hot, dry, silent summer. Nature’s resilience is a wonder.

Beyond the tender grass and the timid birdsong, much of the natural world feels off kilter. Yes, the green and yellow courgettes in my veg patch reproduced like rabbits throughout the summer, pushing my culinary creativity to the limit. We ate them raw in salads, grilled in slivers on pasta or over fish, grated in galettes, stuffed with cheese or rice, whizzed into soup. But very few of my tomatoes have ripened, despite all that sun, while the pumpkins and butternuts were ready to be picked mid-August, rather than early October. The leeks seem frozen in time.

I’m still having trouble looking trees in the eye. They have suffered badly, and it's our fault. Some are clearly dead; others have liver-spotted leaves or almost none at all, like this pair of balding poplars that mark our property line. One already had its top snapped off in a ferocious storm last year.

Which should act as a reminder to everyone – returning tourists at the end of August, even those in climate-denial, couldn’t have missed the legions of dead trees along the autoroute – that global warming has not gone away just because a few drops fell from the sky and we’re no longer sweltering. But I worry (I know, dear Reader, when do I not?) about our ability to remember from one summer to the next. Inconvenient truths get conveniently forgotten in winter.

It was only at the last bend of my walk, with the sun fully up, that I remembered the date and the 25th anniversary. Maybe because September 11 2001 was a similarly glorious morning on the east coast of the United States until the planes flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, crashed in a field and clouded the blue skies with death.

During breakfast, I read about spats over who should and shouldn’t be allowed to attend memorial ceremonies; about the senseless, endless war in Iran; about the hate for the Other being stirred up at the Republican midterm convention (during Senator Ted Cruz's speech demonising Muslim Democrats, multiple calls of "He should be shot" were not even remarked upon, much less denounced). You can quibble about the finer points, but it seems to me the terrorists got much of what they wanted that day, which was to set America on a trajectory of fear and anger that would ultimately diminish it.

All the more reason this fine morning to reject venom and violence, to instead send wishes for a bright and productive rentrée.

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