AUTUMN SPLENDOUR IS WITH US

So here we go with the red and the orange and the yellow!

Maples and liquidambars, hazels and everything, all the colours of autumn.

The top is a maple, then a cut-leaved maple, the magnificent liquidambar and finally a something or other.

Right, got that out of the way.
Plans are afoot for getting an estimate to tame the stream in the lower garden - R has someone in mind to do that and drain the boggy bits. Whilst they are at it I suppose they might as well create a proper pond, not a muddy bottomed puddle.

Having said all that we will probably get to November next year still full of good intentions and nowt done.

I have cleared and manured the asparagus bed, cleared the rhubarb and the courgette remains and roughly dug over the beds. No frost yet but imminent despite some of the larger trees still having green leaves. One cherry has turned a pleasant yellow but the great white one is stubbornly green,

Have just been to Herefordshire, land of lanes and small villages, few people and cider. Daughter I. and family live 850 feet up on a hill with wonderful views and a suicidal drive up to the house - needs a five wheel drive! Must be steeper than 50% (for old fogeys like me - 1 in 2) and slippery.
There many of the trees are still green.
They have two organic rotervators, rotivators, rotavators (spelling debatable) ?? who are about to turn into two freezers full of bacon, sausages etc. They remove everything - I lie - they do not like docks!
R wondered if they would be a good thing here but I said NO!!!! as they would churn everything and make a terrible mess. Any way she has me and a fork. (:-)=
(It's a smiley Bonnie.)

So the future is slash and compost (or burn), dig and muck.

It is now so cold I live in a fleece like a sheep. R insists that we do not need the central heating on (and she is the one who is supposed to feel the cold.)

I huddle near the Aga or the wood burner.

I wonder where I put my fingerless gloves?

So to carrots of indeterminate shapes and so on. I am about to lift them - I know they can stay in the ground even if the tops have died back - and turn them into soup - probably with coriander (not grown by me but harvested from the supermarket.

The middle one, but on the left, looks a bit anthropomorphic to me - sort of a carrot orgy with tangled limbs.
Ah! Well, now for a (no not an orgy) sandwich as R has deserted me for a reading group Thai meal out.
Nice mug of tea, sandwich by the fire (and some hot-buttered toast but not with butter, something veggie called Pure) and watch all the recordings from the TV R does not like.