MELLOW FRUITFULNESS

Normally we can see thirty miles across Morecambe Bay from our kitchen but today is a day known to the Scots as dreich. 

It rained all night and we are submerged in cloud and mizzle - a mixture of drizzle and mist

I can just see the trees beyond the big eucalyptus where two pigeons sit and regularly shake the water from their feathers.

It is not really cold, about 12C, and it takes until early afternoon for the cloud to lift with a light breeze.

Nevertheless it still rains.

The garden is full of fruit and seeds. The damsons pears and apples are at an end and the last bowl has been collected, the damsons with my father's old shepherd's crook to pull down the higher branches. Elsewhere there are many types of fruit. 

Haws and hips and barberries.

And then there are seeds - and grasses, figwort, woundwort and opium poppy heads.

One of the most fascinating seed heads is that if the yellow flag iris.

The seeds are packed together rather like stacked coins and are brown flattened discs.

Elsewhere we have germination of grass seed where the old compost heaps were sited. I have now to decide when to remove the protective netting and let the wildlife invade.

Some things are doing well - I cut back the overgrown petunias in the pot outside the kitchen not expecting much but they have regrown. 

The Michaelmas daisies near the front door (the door at the back) are a waterfall over the paving. I had decided to dig them up and move them but now am not so sure. For much of the year they are a rather untidy mess but, at a time when so much is winding down they light up a dark part of the garden.

I watched Gardeners' World and M Don says to not water the succulents through the winter so I will do so but keep a close eye on them, particularly the aeonium. Mind you our specimen cannot compete with his whoppers.

And then the sun comes out, leaves have not all fallen yet and, as long as I keep off the bottom grass there is work to do.