The nights are longer than the days and the sun is low and lighting up dewy cobwebs spun between the plants.

This morning I looked out of the window and saw a blue tractor with a bright red trailer, full of huge round bales on Oak Meadow.

The grass has been cut. It has been turned over until it was pale yellow and then rolled and tied. Now the field seems bare and dead.

“It’s late to make hay,” you might think.

Well it is, but it’s for a reason and everything is safe and far from dead. There has been time for flower seeds to scatter and creatures to prepare.

Some of the field creatures are safely underground waiting for the spring. The fertilised queen bumble bees have fed on the late nectar and then hidden in a hole in the soil.

There they keep warm in the cooler weather. Moth caterpillars have burrowed into the soil. The grasshoppers have laid their eggs safely below ground.

And there is something else – we have left wide borders where creatures can hide in the nettles, overgrown shrubs and hedges. The butterfly chrysalises are here, clinging to stems. There is a niche for everything.

I am looking at the wild border now and I see a spider with her web. Have you ever tapped on the ‘guy ropes’ of a spider’s web? If you do, the spider will come rushing out to see what she has caught. I can see this spider has already caught flies and a wasp, which hang there for a tasty meal.

She must prepare in earnest because she does not live through the winter. She has spun her wheel web between stems of foxglove seed heads. She is patient and waits for food to come to her.

Then a green-veined butterfly, at the end of its life, is trapped in the web and my spider covers it in silken thread. This will sustain her before she lays her eggs in a cocoon, where they will hide until next spring.

All is changing but all is well.

n Some of Vicky’s Nature Notes photos can be seen at Oswestry Library as part of the ‘Nature and Heritage on your Doorstep’ exhibition.