Dear Readers, when I was getting ready to go out this morning, I called out to my husband.

“Looks like the sun’s coming out!”

And then I realised that it wasn’t the sun at all, as I could still hear the rain hammering down on the skylight.

It was buttery, sunshiny yellow of the leaves on the climbing hydrangea lighting up the bathroom. What a treat it was!

The plant has gotten pretty big, as you know…

And the leaves are at different stages of green-yellow exuberance.

I love the way that the grey, rainy days seem to make the autumn leaves glow even more. The cherry and crab apple trees here on the County Roads in East Finchley are putting on quite the show this year, although the slippery mush that the leaves break down into makes quite the challenge for those with dodgy ankles. Still, carefully does it! And I love the way that the red of the leaves highlights the red of the bricks…

But we need to make the most of these days, because before you know it, the leaves will be down and it will properly be winter, inasmuch as you can say that any season is reliable these days. Maybe it would be safer to say ‘it’s November’ and leave it at that.

And as I looked down at all the fallen crab apples, as hard and dangerous as marbles, I wondered if anyone had written a poem about them. And they had! I love this poem by Vicki Feaver. See what you think.

Crab Apple Jelly by Vicki Feaver

Every year you said it wasn’t worth the trouble –
you’d better things to do with your time –
and it made you furious when the jars
were sold at the church fête
for less than the cost of the sugar.

And every year you drove into the lanes
around Calverton to search
for the wild trees whose apples
looked as red and as sweet as cherries,
and tasted sharper than gooseberries.

You cooked them in the wide copper pan
grandma brought with her from Wigan,
smashing them against the sides
with a long wooden spoon to split
the skins, straining the pulp

through an old muslin nappy.
It hung for days, tied with a string
to the kitchen steps, dripping
into a bowl on the floor –
brown-stained, horrible,

a head in a bag, a pouch
of sourness, of all that went wrong
in that house of women. The last drops
you wrung out with your hands;
then, closing doors and windows

to shut out the clamouring wasps,
you boiled up the juice with sugar,
dribbling the syrup onto a cold plate
until it set to a glaze,
filling the heated jars.

When they were cool
you held one up to the light
to see if the jelly had cleared.
Oh Mummy, it was as clear and shining
as stained glass and the colour of fire.