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Today we went on a short walk on our journey from Alton to Chawton discovering a path to Chawton village. We saw ivy flowers covered with wasps and ladybirds- last food before hibernation. Moss covered walls. Many kites flying.

The feel and composition of the woodland varies massively in Normandy Common - in some areas, the holly below a canopy of oak and silver bird is so dense it feels dark even on a sunny day. There are areas of open oak and Scots Pine canopy, interspersed with downy birch, sweet chestnut, and silver birch and young rowan, holly, and saplings beneath. An area of marshy wetland beside a ditch-like stream has been planted in the past with Western Hemlock, but silver birch has come in naturally where-ever the light has let it. Another area is very dark and barren beneath mature hemlock, though looking up you see oak, birch and sweet chestnut struggling to find light against the spreading, shading hemlock. Many of the canopy trees seem a similar age - another day we will age them, but we guess at around 100 to 150 years old - which is about the time when this land was given to the army/crown by a local estate.

We were possibly a little late in our seed collection - the rowan berries were very sparse, but the holly had only recently turned red so were probably not ready to plant. The sweet chestnuts were hard to find - possibly more due to being eaten by squirrels and possibly badger. The only easy one were the acorns - absolutely everywhere and already starting to germinate. We are pot planting and will see how many make it to seedling stage. The challenge will be finding places to plant them in a year or two time.

The autumn leaves are stunning this year, especially the golds and russet-browns. So we decided to see what colours really are in the different leaf colours and do some leaf chromatography. We used two solvents to separate out the leaf colour - acetone (nail polish remover) and rubbing alcohol (!). After cutting, grinding and squishing the leaves we wiped some of the colour onto strips of filter paper about 2cm from the bottom. These were then placed into jars with the solvent at the bottom. As the solvent moved up the filter paper, it drew out the different colours - the yellow and green can be seen clearly on both holly and green oak. The red leaf is Japanese Maple in our garden. Overall, we felt the acetone did a better job. Sweet chestnut, oak, dogwood and holly gave stronger colour than birch, hazel and rowan. The yellow leaves had no green in them but some had a hint of orangey-red.

Lucas managed to find some conquers, acorns and also spotted some birdlife through his binoculars. Was a really fun activity and nice to get out and about! Steven & Lucas MacQueen

We did the Halloween Hunt trail around Callander on Saturday managing to avoid most of the rain and the wind! We learned about bats, toads, spiders, ravens and other ‘spooky’ animals. This morning we carved our pumpkin. We saved the seeds and gave them a wash before roasting them in the oven. We then crushed them up a bit breaking their hard cases and poked some into an apple before putting them outside on our bird feeder. We hope the birds enjoy them!

We did the Halloween trail and loved it!