I picked my eldest daughter up yesterday and headed for the woods for a Dad and Daughter day. She’s been a few times before but not at this time of year. She likes to get stuck in and help with jobs, not frightened to get her hands dirty or spiked with brambles. The day started out bright but it was due to deteriorate later. I wasn’t too focussed on work, wanting to enjoy the company and show her around. She’s always had an interest in small living things. As a young child she loved looking into rock pools and once built a small bug home at the bottom of the garden out of pebbles sticks and leaves. I love showing people around the woods and pointing out some of the easily overlooked features that are not obvious to the casual observer.

There’s a real autumnal feel there now though most of the trees are still pretty green. It will all change in a few weeks. We did a bit of bramble pulling, log stacking and brash clearing. These tasks seem dull and laborious but can be quite cathartic. Working your muscles doing “real” work, engaging with the land and nature produces a calm satisfaction. We talked about the feelings we both get there, of somehow belonging to the woods rather than the other way around. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You don’t get the same depth of belonging when casually walking through a public wood. I think the connection comes when you work in it and even more so when you start to know it quite well.

I’d spotted some neighbours’ car earlier so we had a walk around to theirs to say hello. They remarked that there were lots of fungi around this year. I haven’t seen much in mine but their patch is predominantly coniferous – larch and Corsican pine, whereas mine is broadleaf. The top layer of soils are not the same due to the different leaf litters so that may account for it. This little fungi was only a couple of centimetres in size and growing on a stump. The colour is amazing and it looks almost like a sea anemone.

These tiny bracket fungi can be seen in my woods growing on dead wood. This is a hazel stake used to support a tree guard.

As the afternoon progressed, it became very windy. Quite unnerving working beneath sixty feet high lanky trees that are flapping about. Time to head home.