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I wonder if approaching menopause can affect your sense of smell? Either way, as menopause nears I suspect I’m turning into a boring old you know. The latest sign of this is that with the onset of autumn I find myself musing rather less on fruitfulness and rather more on the season of mists and mellow wistfulness if you’ll pardon a Keatsian malapropism; but enough of the fancy language – what I’m on about today is smoke – specifically the smell of smoke on the chilly night air now that autumn has arrived. That particular smell has not been available in this part of the world for several years. In fact, you break the law here if you set fire to stuff in the privacy of your own back yard. I’ve even heard rumours of helicopters on smoke watch but have no idea whether they are to be believed or not. What was good news for asthma sufferers and environmentalists is rather less good news for gardeners whose dilemma in October is what to do with the debris of fallen leaves once they have been swept and bagged and stacked against the garden wall. I regret I have no solution to offer. I digress to confess that several bags of mine were recently nicked by those vans that go around stealing the bags of old clothing that are put outside for collection by the charity shops. I would rather like to have seen the thieves’ faces when they realised their mistake. Summer time ends this weekend and as I tuck up the garden beds for the winter snooze, I yearn for other gardens in other times and the smell of the burning leaves.
