AUTUMN TAIL END

 What a lovely sunny crisp day down by the bay, cotoneaster berries flourishing and nearby the black bryony hanging in poisonous ropes in the hedge.

But no it is not at home - the tide has gone out and the fog rolled in.

There is still colour in then garden, calendulas and nasturtiums.

However many of the leaves have fallen and are blown away, mainly under shrubs where they can rot down as a mulch.

The big cherry still has a few and the beech hedge is well coloured.

The gardener has removed the last of the buddleia from by the septic tank and R wants miscanthus to replace it - we have some so will need dividing and replanting. At least with the tank and our own borehole we do not have to pay water rates (yet) nor contribute to the pollution of our rivers.

In the main path up the garden a couple of shaggy parasol fungi have erupted. We do not seem to have had as many fungi this year but have no idea why - perhaps the wet year has drowned the lot? It has been exceptionally wet and that is saying something for it always rains a lot here. I have decided to cease mowing although the grass is a bit long as it is so boggy.

Well, that all folks, hard frosts at night, snow forecast but missed us, my knees gone and wobbly so physics and doctors and so on - exercises for strength and balance, out walking, well stumbling along walking stick in hand.

So I will leave you with the fatsia in full bloom and the rose on the shed still in flower.

This weekend twenty to thirty thousand people will descend on our town for the annual Dickensian Festival - locally known as the Dickfest. We pray for good weather but it looks like it might rain as it often does here.

AUTUMN COLOUR

 Autumn is definitely with us. The trees are turning, the fieldfares and redwings are back from Scandinavia,  it is half term and the Lake District is full of holiday makers in the rain.

Whirling seed everywhere, the big sycamore has never produced so many offspring. I get out the blower and clear the drive. Next day it is carpeted again.

And the colours change with the cooler, damper, darker weather.

With R having cleared away the old willow herb we can suddenly see our old fig again. I had almost forgotten about it.

The leaf litter, this is mainly beech (we have a hedge but no trees) shines in the sun. (When we get any).

Else where there is leaf colour, yellows and greys, shrubs that keep their leaves. especially on the banking in front of the house.

But not all is leaves - I dug up some potatoes - R had found them sprouting in the veg cupboard so I put them in. A few slug nibbles etc but they are edible. I am trying to remember what they were when they were bought - perhaps Maris Piper? And yes, you can see a grubby turnip in there too.

I am still deadheading the cosmos and dahlias and have harvested the last of the pears. Even with the long basket thingy I cannot reach the top of the tree. Climbing a ladder will be very vetoed. I tend to fall - always have done. The first time I broke my arm I slipped in a cowpat.

The sweet peas are gone and I have cut them down but there enough flowers for small vases.

The hydrangeas are now changing, the Annabelle gone brown and needing deadheading, the other going pink and okay for now. This is a time for disease and fungi to erupt - we have shaggy parasols by the main path and the azalea leaves have their autumn colour masked by mildew.

So we march on towards November. A tawny owl hoots from the wood, a pheasant squawks arrogantly and rabbits just keep quiet - you never know who might be about. Then the heron lifts from the pond and in a few huge flaps is gone over the hedge.

JUST A LITTLE LOVAGE

Changes things . .  (Decca F.12553)

So R decided the lovage comes out and I plant a Hydrangea Annabelle in its place - one I have grown from a cutting. 

The lovage was a thug, roots the thickness of small branches and I had to divide it into six with a spade before any luck. It filled a wheelbarrow and that was after cutting it back.

Once out not much soil remaining so I will have to address that before planting.

I have taken two pieces and dug them into rough grass up from the pond. The rest has been dumped in a corner and will survive, or not.

Replanted the nearby crambe and added some wallflowers.

We went to the Lowick Show, The Li''le Royal, back after Covid and one tent I love is the one with the veg and children's concoctions -

beetroot

Mmm, not sure what this animal is.

Then J and D had given us one of their courgettes but we are not sure what sort of duck it is.

We have had a dismal crop of Bramleys, perhaps the frost got the blossom in the spring but we do have some damsons that need picking.

We are still harvesting sweet peas though the stem length is getting less as we move into autumn. Of course they have not been grown a la TV with tendril removal etc - just shoved at the bottom of some sticks and fed and watered. They are not the ones I grew from the autumn just bought in a shop - much easier.

Must mow the lawn - it is pouring - ah! well.

Autumn is decay? Here the cut trunk is already being consumed by fungi - 38 rings I think.

It is the time of the Japanese Anemones, they do tend to spread so I bunged these where that does not matter.

When we think of corvids there are crows and rooks and ravens and even a though but here are two thieves eating our fallen plums - jay and magpie.

We have tawny owls next door and barn owls at the farm -

WAILING IN THE NIGHT

Had I not been awake I would have missed it.

Outside the window a baby was keening.

I was in bed, under the blankets reading by a flickering torch.

And it was after midnight.        

     

    But there it was again.

I crept to my window, gently parted the curtains.

A waning moon lit the roof of the porch.

Three feet away, open mouthed and wailing

sat the baby, 

    but not a baby. 

A barn owl swivelled its head,

    stared at me,

 

blinkless, 

ignored me, 

keened again.

Had I not been awake I would have missed it.

MARCHing ON

 Well, no need to leap this year, the lads safe from proposals and the first daffodils coming out.

Tuesday was sunny, March 1st, the first day of meteorological spring. Back to winter now.

So - spring flowers - we have seen pussy willow, hazel catkins and winter cherry out but here in the garden it is the smaller stuff.

Tom's crocuses at the top from the wood, then the little daffs I brought in a pot from our previous house, anemone blanda  yellow and purple crocuses more daffs and the first primroses.

There is lots of new growth but also things sometimes come to an end.

Fortunately this bracket fungus was not here but down at Conishead Priory where they lost several magnificent trees in the storms.

Down at the pond the frogs keep spawning. I think the heron will be here soon.

The rhubarb is coming on erupting through the soil surface and looking good in the forcing pot. We must remember to freeze some this year, forgot last.

I see some Russian millionaire has offered $1 million dollars for Putin to be removed. What is it with these Russian leaders having their names ending with -in? Putout would be better.

Why anyone would want to be remembered in the same breath as Stalin or Hitler, let alone Genghis Khan etc etc beats me. He has done the unforgivable thing for a politician and cornered himself - no way out now with the world recalling him as a good guy. Ah! Vanity!

What a world, just me and a black dog. 😟

FIRST FROST

We still have some flowers in the garden but not many, it means I have to search a bit.

Of course the fatsia is now heading for full bloom as it is nearly December - cannot quite work that out.

And there is leaf colour but mainly on the ground and the paths. The cherry colours are glorious but the sycamore the usual drab brownish grey.

 We are plagued by ivy as a ground weed - yes up trees but under them too, in flower beds and tangled in the plants there. 

Just noticed the viburnum in flower by the veg beds and also discovered some strange fruit like clustered rabbit droppings. And we have fungi like this pale yellow one, I think it is a wax cap.

Elsewhere azalea, hazel and beech still coloured, so is the royal fern.

Outside my study window is pot corner - bulbs and lilies waiting for the spring.

Four weeks to the shortest day and we have had some sunshine. The view from the kitchen doors is special in the late afternoon as light begins to fade.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.

Oh, forgot to tell you the small black fruit are, of course, privet.

Sun is setting on a cold dry day.