A sudden fall. Opening the door, I find the ground is littered with leaves: birch, oak, lime, maple, hazel, blackthorn, dogwood… all making a lovely mess on the newly laid paths, helped by foraging black birds, blue tits, and red squirrels.

I’m posting an extract from the Scotland Grows article kindly commissioned and published as a Reader’s Garden feature for December. Trees Mean Home is their heading and it takes on special meaning this treacherously stormy winter. Trees are the reason we bought our ten acre plot 30 years ago. In a rapidly changing climate we value their shelter more than ever.

Autumn has arrived, late again but full of gusty energy and glowing with colour. Rowans flamed bravely but briefly, doused by that ferocious east wind. I just hope we get a chance to enjoy the red oak before the next storm blows in, but we can depend on the beech trees, they won’t let go of their leaves until next spring and this year they seem brighter than ever – you can see their glow reflected in the pond and from quite a distance as you come up the road.

This is where we came in. For us autumn is the anniversary of a beginning, not an end. Thirty Septembers ago Ray and I found our way to Pond Cottage lured by an ad in The Scotsman. Only then there was no road.

We were here for the trees which was just as well. The cottage was derelict. A sturdy ash tree grew through a hole in the roof. The pond was silted up and the old quarry was a neighbourhood dump.

But we heard water flowing over the sluice and sun was shining through autumn leaves. We were well and truly caught. See more on Scotland Grows And from that early romance: Wanted: a deep mulch of money

A winter scene at Pond Cottage. Looking through the tawny leaves of a beech tree framing snowy banks of the pond