I was not sure if there would be enough top soil for it to take hold but after a couple of weeks of ideal weather, hot days with bursts of rain, the grass was coming up. The raw look of the hard bare earth was beginning to show a veneer of green, and the devastation of the landscaping work was slowly starting to heal. There were some very strong gales later in October and in a matter of days the ground and the drive was a covered in ochre coloured leaves. Autumn had truly arrived with the dry rustling of wind in the dead leaves: a wistful sound portending the coming of winter. The shed was full of logs and it felt good to light the wood burner in the evening knowing there was enough fuel to last the winter. Then a sudden snow fell in the last week of the month … earlier than for three decades in the valley!
Global warming, far from bringing extreme heat waves to these Welsh valleys, seems to have mainly brought gales, torrential rain and unseasonal snowfalls. I grew up in a house right next to the river Wye in Herefordshire and know what the weather can be like in these border regions. As a child, I remember winters so cold that when the river flooded and water covered all the local fields, it froze so solid that my brother and I could go skating on them. But I don’t remember gales like the ones I have experienced these last months or the sudden storms that I have witnessed here. There is only one thing that is beginning to look certain from my brief experience in ‘Green Valley’: the future is unpredictable!