THERE IS AUTUMN IN THE AIR

And it is only August.

Outside the kitchen doors the house martins have fledged and are hawking for insects (or just flying for the joy of it). 

Above the house five buzzards are circling and calling, two adults and three young.
The first changes are already appearing in leaves with green turning to yellows and browns. The windfall apples are attracting rabbits and  squirrels.

And it is Friday with a lot of windfall as a gale blows through, pots on their sides and twigs in the wood all over the place.

The damsons are coming, slowly, not ripe yet but soon.
Yesterday I nipped out to do some mowing but much of the garden was wet so there are tyre tracks in the wood and the lower garden, muddy marks of my passing.

S the gardener came and removed the aquilegias from the rose bed as they were choking everything. The cherry is shading it too much so two limbs will have to be removed to let the light in. Yellow plants like the primula by the pond and the black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) do break the darkness.

The tops of the potatoes have died back so I must get them up, dry them and put them in a hessian sack in the shed. Tonight we eat chard with some of George the fish van man's own smoked haddock.

Fruit is on the way -
 

 Victoria plums which I thinned, honestly I did, Conference pears, damsons, coloured but still not ripe and Bramley apples maturing nicely.

The birds, when we had the feeders up, in pre rat days, managed to scatter sunflower seeds several of which have germinated like this one sharing a pot with a box.









And there are flowers around - gladioli and Emma Hamilton (the rose).






And hydrangeas have loved this year - whether the weather has suited them I do not know but they are loaded with flowering heads.

So, Saturday, blog part written and now, no I won't, go in the garden - raining again. I had thought to prune and tidy the bay trees but . . . 

There are flowers in peculiar places - pink Japanese anemones and crocosmias in the long unkempt grass of the banking - and this acanthus - one of the most vicious things in the garden - definitely a case for gloves.

I am glad this year we have managed to rear the Cosmos Purity, have failed in the past due to the many nibblers we have, as it really lights up the garden.

All this wet weather is depressing - after such a glorious spring (despite viruses etc,) so here is a depressing poem - bears no relation to reality of course. (Mmm!)

THE BLACK DOG

He had no warning of decrepitude,

just a gradual loss of health, of fitness,

a lack of desire to exercise, walk,

a load of can’t be botheredness,

of wearing the same clothes for days.

All the blood tests came back normal,

so the sleeping and lethargy 

were depression - they said. “Age,”

he thought limping to the lavatory

for the fourth time that morning.

It was easier when the sun shone,

somehow. Coming winter hovered 

like a thunderstorm, lowered overhead,

but lightning never struck, nothing rumbled,

darkness just trundled in relentlessly.

So he sat down and wrote several

depressing poems like this one

hoping they would be cathartic.

They weren’t. He sat in the kitchen,

opened a book and went to sleep.