Art Appreciation

The hedgerow (a term I generously apply to the unruly thicket that is encroaching on the apiary) puts together its own collages at this time of year, and then invites the sun to provide professional-quaility lightning at eye-catching low angles

We are down to the last five days of picking brambles. Michaelmas is approaching, when Satan, cast out of heaven by St Michael, fell into a blackberry bush and cursed the fruit. Or insert a myth of your choosing. I did pick some and, this side of the quarter-day, they still taste good

Every year, I think I have never seen so many haws, it must be a sign of a cold winter. Every year I'm right - winter is cold. I look forward to the days when the redwing and fieldfare are back and feasting on them

The bees are enthused by the ivy flowers. The hives were, well, a hive of activity. They will still be raising winter bees, and the foragers were returning with enormous loads of bright yellow ivy pollen with which to nourish them. Ivy yields nectar too - though the resulting honey tastes (to our palates) disgusting. I still have syrup on the hives but they are taking it only slowly, despite having been given expanded space to store it. While the sun is this strong, foraging for ivy is their preferred option

If you go large and squint, nature's artwork has a fourth component: some bristly seeds - now dessicated and hard - hanging over from the spring. The plant they are from has a multitude of country names. Farming literature calls it 'cleavers' (Galium aparine), but most of us will know it by childhood names: goosegrass, sticky willy, bedstraw, and many others. In my childhood, it was 'herrif'; I have no idea of the meaning or origin of the word, and it is seldom quoted. I'm not alone, though; I found the name in a farming forum, on a comment in 2020

I took the picture in a break from mowing the apiary. Too late in the year to make much practical difference really, but it is a job I lay worrying about in the midst of Covid delerium - I shall sleep easier now it's done