I filled the last weekend in August with small rituals that sang of late summer. I walked, hair-whipped, through the barren shingle of Winchelsea picking blackberries, fat and salty with sea air. I cut back the greying lavender in our front garden and breathed in its deep purple hue. I stuffed the fridge full of produce grown by more patient friends – fat yellow courgettes, pimply cucumbers, feathery agretti and parsley – and baked plums into cakes.
Summer’s waning can be a bitter-sweet time: the gloom and magic of autumn looms, another season of the year sneaks out the door. But this year feels particularly piquant; we’ve had such a strange and somehow absent summer. While wildfires have raged on the continent, the UK has been left under clouds by the same damaged climate. Last summer, as the country sweltered during weeks of heat, I longed for rain. This year I’ve barely sat in the garden.
Content from our partners
