Autumn - season of...

"mists and mellow fruitfulness"?
Round here, it's season of the potato tractors. I was talking to Anna at Drover Holidays yesterday. Her shop is just on the Blue Boar corner, and they were coming roaring round every few minutes. "Come to the countryside for peace and quiet!" Anna said, in one of the lulls when we could actually hear each other speak. It was like being under the flight path to Heathrow.

Autumn is also the season of fungi. I went down the little path by the Swan Well the other day. This is a spring that once was one of the main sources of water for Hay. The water from the spring runs a few yards into the Loggin Brook - which was once one of the sewage outlets straight into the Wye, and still has a Victorian pipe running down it (now unused) from when they decided to confine the sewage as it passed through the town. It's a lovely little corner now, hidden away behind the almshouses and opening onto the road opposite the church. There's a tree stump there, covered in Dryad's saddle fungi. They look like half a pancake stuck onto the trunk, and some of them are a foot across.

Across the river on the Offa's Dyke path, there's a cairn, and someone has left a teddy dressed as a ballerina propped up against it. She's got a little pink dress and shoes, and silk roses between her ears.

Down in the car park, the shed that houses the plastic recycling is being demolished. It looks as if someone has run into it.