SEEDS

This morning there was mist in the valley, a golden sunrise over the distant bay, the moorhen on the pond and a digger and a dumpertruck outside my window. I could hear the church bells from St Mary's in Ulverston and gunfire from the clay pigeon shoot in the quarry at Bayclliff.

Yesterday R began to cut back the tangle at the side of the pond and this morning I got out the scythe and completed it. Now the leaves of the water lilies have sunk below the surface the water is a mirror.    
The morning is interrupted by a cackling and squawking outside the kitchen. There are three hen pheasants battling, it seems, over a lone cock bird standing to one side. They see me and scuttle off except the cock, who waits, hoping for a handful of seed.

We have tidied the sedums and I cut back the cut-leaved elder. The ladies with the horses have promised a load of manure very soon.

With the arrival of the builders the feeders on the shed outside my window had to go and now there are only three outside the kitchen, one Nyger seed, one peanuts and one sunflower seed. The last two are squirrel proof and the grey tree rats seem to have gone, for now.

The pots by the back door have had the dying nasturtiums moved to the compost heap and two Erysimum Bowles mauve have been put in there with a selection of bulbs saved by me from last year.

Compost spreading on veg beds continues and the last of the beetroot have been harvested.

Seeds have been ordered and bought - all online except for some green zinnias 'Envy" R bought in a garden centre.
We have broad beans, butternut squash, parsnip, mizuna, dill,
Swiss chard, carrot and also sweet peas, nasturtiums, french marigolds, mixed zinnias and escholzias.

We have just had our annual Dickensian weekend with stalls, acts, people in Victorian dress etc. All I managed to do was fall flat on my face in the middle of King St. and several ladies of indeterminate age rushed to see I was ok - which I was. Stupid arthritic knee gave way - old man stuff.

There are so many leaves in the garden - I now bag them up and leave to make leaf mould - but there are SO many. I have done one bag but the big sycamore produces enough for a hundred.

Colour is still flourishing - have just had some alstroemerias put in a vase and the roses continue despite frost. Apart from that we have the Liquidambar tree still stunning and then, if you look in hidden corners, the glory of autumn bramble leaves.

The leaves do take one's mind of concrete, steel reinforcing rods and the attack on the western wall of the house to come.