There's no denying it, here it comes again, round like a circle in a spiral. Leaves on the ground, craneflies clinging to walls and windows, apple's falling silently through space and an alarming rise in the number of calls to the office about squirrels. Autumn's here.
Two weeks ago, I was enjoying a walk around Rainham Marshes, admiring the juicy blackberries, bursting with flavours of port and wine. Back at home, I'm surveying mounds of rubble-filled soil and my newly created Inca-style stepped vegetable beds. Summer to muddy Autumn in a dozen days.
Autumn's the time to get down and dirty with those big garden-landscaping jobs you've been avoiding. My arms, legs and back ache but the pile of rubbish, rubble and concrete that we inherited when we moved in to our new home almost twelve months ago, has gone. Like a ripple from a pebble someone's tossed in a stream, the impact of the first spade bite moves inexorably down the pathway.
In its place is a raised terrace with a long stepped ramp on one side and the shorter but deeper raised beds on the other side. It's a great transformation. Great until you turn around and see the piles of sifted soil leftover. There's no rear access to my garden so I'll have to be creative with this soil and come up with another landscaping answer to bury the remaining rubble and cover it with the soil.
Compared with when we moved in the garden is now alive with birds; great tits, blue tits, a couple of robins, magpies, blackbirds, pigeons, a wren, thrush and a pair of jays. I think it was one of the kindly pigeons that emptied the remains of its meal on my bent back as I toiled beneath the London Plain Tree. One of the robins came to inspect the newly turned soil and kept me company for a while. There's still a huge expanse of concrete slabs to clear so maybe they are the bones of an urban version of a dry stone retaining wall and more raised beds recreating a half forgotten dream of words that jangle in your head.
There are still a couple of major problems that I haven't resolved yet, despite quizzing the best minds in the London conservation world. Foxes and squirrels. The former live on the railway embankment nearby, the latter believe they have free reign across my garden and my neighbours. In fact they do. To underline this the leaves on the trees and shrubs have turned the colour of their tails.
The squirrels emptied one of the RSPB's twin feeders of sunflower kernels within a week. I tried dusting the feeding apertures with chilli powder. That worked for 12 hours. Birds are impervious to its heat but the squirrels weren't too keen. However, it quickly wore away so I resorted to buying a feeder-cage to keep them out. The seed now lasts almost four weeks before the tits need me to top it up.
There is no single bit of advice offered on deterring foxes and squirrels. They are as important an element of wildlife as electricity is to blogging! Rather than wage a war of attrition it may be best to learn to live with each other like wheels within wheels. The best advice comes down to this: Remove food and shelter. Not great if you're creating a wildlife garden. They are not as easily removed as footprints in the sand!
Next on my list of jobs is to plant a traditional hedge and some fruit trees. My aim is to create varied environments that will attract insects, birds and as much other wildlife as an urban space can support. Maybe then the unchecked numbers of slugs and snails will reduce while toads, hoverflies and birds all increase. That day's a long way off but images unwind, like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind.
Apologies to Noel Harrison and next week I promise not to listen to music, however apt, while writing this blog!