Country diary: Ragged butterflies, comatose bees - these are the last of the summer sights | Phil Gates

Blanchland, Northumberland: Today's perfect autumn day captures the dying embers of a memorable summerIt's one of those warm, hazy September afternoons that demands to be squirrelled away in the memory; cached autumnal pleasures waiting to be dug out again on the coldest winter nights. Oak acorns falling, overripe brambles decaying, glistening spiders' webs, a sun-bleached field of dry grasses, dark umber angelica umbels loaded with seeds.Last time we walked this path, dodging muddy puddles on a chilly March morning, we found white blackthorn blossom. Today, those bushes were laden with blue-black sloes, some already wrinkled. Thistledown, torn asunder by a charm of goldfinches, drifts over the wall as we wander down towards the river. The birds erupt and rise over our heads, a twittering flock of gold-barred wings against blue sky, wheeling this way and that, uncertain, wary, then settle again. Continue reading...