The swallows have gone. It must have been some time last week, because one day they were here, circling and swooping around the house and congregating on the telegraph wires, the next minute, they were gone.

I thought the housemartins had also departed, but yesterday I discovered the pair that had reared a late brood in their nest in the stable window are still here. The young family is still peeping out of the nest, twittering for their parents. I hope they are strong enough to make that long journey.

It’s funny how, when the summer visitors depart, the native birds seem to become more visible. I never seem to notice the robin quite the same during the summer. Maybe it’s because we are too busy to stop, or maybe it’s because he is just hopping about in the undergrowth out of sight. I’m not sure why, but this morning, when I opened our bedroom curtains, there he was sitting in the top branches of the copper beech tree in the garden and he was singing his heart out.

There seem to be a lot of owls about as well. Last night, coming back home from Settle on the edge of dark, I counted as many as eight along my route, sitting on the fence post tops on the roadside. The short eared owls that live locally are also often out hunting in the early evening. I have stopped several times to watch them, their slow, deliberate, almost ghostly movements; the quiet hunters.

Apart from a few late roses and autumn crocus, there are not many flowers in my garden right now. The only colour is coming from the changing leaves. At the flower show last week and on the farmers’ market at the weekend, people were busy buying basketfuls of bulbs. I need to be getting on with that job as well if I’m going to put some in for next year.

This morning, Stuart has been helping shift some scaffolding up to Cowside which is scheduled for renovation. He has just phoned me to ask me to take him a hat, coat and gloves – he is frozen. I trawled through the box of walling gloves which all seemed to be left-handed, dug out the woolly hats and a thick coat and drove up to meet him at Deepdale bridge. The river is dry – in fact, there is no water at all at Yockenthwaite. It looks as though we have had a long, dry summer!

The scaffolding has to be taken from Deepdale bridge up the riverside track on tractor and trailer, past New House and up the hill to Cowside. It is a long, slow tedious job.

Eddy has just come in after sorting out some sheep and is getting ready to set off over to Hawes to a multi-breed tup sale. Stuart will be going as soon as he has finished at Cowside.

Today I am trying to sort out the text for our new packaging and I am finding it difficult to concentrate because I have just had to answer the telephone again...we couldn’t do without them, but sometimes I wish we could.