AUTUMN CREEPS ON APACE

The autumn leaves drift past my window . . .

Autumn is with us. Leaf colour is intense but many trees are still green. However some shrubs are in fine red and yellow fettle.

(S says it is snowing in London, Ontario and who wants to be in the Philippines with their typhoon!). 

We have just walked in Sea Wood and the fungi are having a great time digesting dead trees and stuff. I am sitting at the computer watching a grey squirrel going into the trap without setting it off - some adjustment needed there. Hang on - gotcha! Time for another relocation job.

The broccoli has been caterpillared, thoroughly. We have given up eating it as the steamer reveals the cooked insects. It has been netted and picked over but to no avail.

Disaster - I have left the big marrow far too long and it has gone rotten, is full of gorging woodlice and other slimy munchers.

I have started then autumn clear away cutting back the shrubby clematis and Marguerites. 
In the garden we have a lovely white Michaelmas daisy, almost six feet tall, and now it dresses the house in various vases.

And leaf colour is not all - the berries on the cotoneaster are splendid - does this mean there is a hard winter coming?

The maple has been pruned to five feet from the ground to encourage it to take the form of a tree rather than a shrub.

There is one apple still up the tree, a big fat one and I cannot reach it and it will not fall when I shake the branch.

APPLE

His first flowering came in the spring.

He missed the late cold

that affected so many.

It was a pleasure to watch him

that summer, his skin filled,

his progress was remarked upon.

The fall came in the autumn

when he ended on the grass

a little bruised but not broken.

His companions went off to market

but he was bundled 

with other damaged souls

and sent scrumpy making.

That Christmas he was remembered fondly

and his health was drunk

throughout the orchards of Herefordshire.

So fare thee well from the garden for another day. It is Wednesday and finally we have rain after a long dry month - or more.