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All change

I am not sure if we are in late summer or early autumn.  I'll go for late summer, but the signs are all there for a shift into autumn.  Here are photos from a couple of walks this week, where the countryside is telling me that we are heading into the season of mellow fruitfulness.  That's fine by me!  I love foraging and I love Autumn.

I have always had rather tepid feelings for August (as well as November and February).  By the time August arrives all the fresh defining greens have morphed into a matt mid-green.  The countryside's palette seems to be just green and straw, with the harvest.  I am glad when August has passed.  Colour in the countryside starts to pick up as we head towards September, which always pleases me!
A gall wasp, Diplolepis rosae, creates these Robin's pincushion galls on wild roses.  I found this one in the hedgerow show above.  
The acid yellow of the rapeseed fields goes to seed in the most muted tones.  Harvested rapeseed fields are impossible to walk in.  The dogs hate them.  The stubble is hard and scratchy, nasty for woman and beast.
This has to be the year of the hazelnut.  I have seen more clusters of unripened nuts in the past couple of weeks than ever before.  I hope the squirrels leave a few for me!  It is decades since I picked and ate a fresh milky hazelnut, straight off the tree.
Harvest time in East Lothian has been foiled by the exceptionally heavy rainfall over the past weeks.  Some fields are now completely flattened and the crops have lost their sunny golden glow in favour of a dirty grey colour.  I would imagine that these fields must be an expensive loss to the farmers.
The fields of barley seem to have fared rather better.  Maybe they carry less weight at the top of the stem than corn.  Only guessing!
The hedgerow above is a real hedgerow!  In the photo below you can see holly, ash, hawthorn and beech, which grow together with elderflower, wild rose, sycamore, and blackberry along the entire length of this old track.  The birds must love it, especially as it is now filling up with ripening fruits.
And finally, at the end of all our walks, Victoria plums ripening on our little tree!

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