In September, I took the dog to visit the old farm and scrump some apples. With Nick Drake playing in my ears, we came by the footpath to the orchard called ‘Stan’s’ – one of only three orchards left on the farm, the others having been ripped up for arable crops. The early-ripening Red Prince were clustered on the trees like jumbled crimson rosaries. A bumper crop this year, thanks to the weather. The tricks of the farmer’s trade, the inner workings of the trees and the Earth’s exact orbit played their parts, but always it falls to the chaos of the atmosphere to decide success or failure.

Here, through warmth and no late frosts, spring and summer were kind, and I’m sure the new owner wouldn’t have minded me pinching a thimble of his harvest. As I picked into a shopping bag, Nick Drake aptly sang:

Fruit tree, fruit tree
No one knows you but the rain and the air
Don't you worry, they'll stand and stare when you're gone

I know that I’m affected by weather too: the physical – the rain, the sun, the weight of the air – and the weather of my life. It comes out in my poetry, in its shape and sweetness; in foggy times, it may not come out at all.

When I had half-filled the bag and thrown an apple for the dog, I crossed into the mixed plantation. Hornbeam and larch trees were turning yellow side by side. The album had ended and I heard the drill of a woodpecker. A stump stared blankly up at me. I could make out the history of the former tree’s life in the growth rings on its darkened face. It struck me that we measure the success of a year differently for plantation trees and fruit trees: the former by how much they grew, the latter by how much they yielded. But both are types of productivity.

The trees stood serenely above me. I wished I could have asked them what they thought of success. What they thought of legacy?

As we left the wood and tramped through the fresh wheat stubble on what was once ‘Pear Bank’, the dog dropped his half-eaten apple to chase a partridge and the closing lines of Nick Drake’s song sounded in my head:

Fruit tree, fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year
They'll all know that you were here when you're gone