Autumn Cottage Diarist

As The Clocks Go Back...

The entrance to the road through the woods

...and we return to Greenwich Mean Time here in the UK, I invite you to take a few steps with me along the walk I took through the woods this afternoon. It's unseasonally warm here at the moment, though more seasonally wet. So in-between the showers, this was how I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours. (Correction - not strictly in-between the showers.,..but those that caught me out found me sheltering under the canopy of leaves that were still on the deciduous trees, and the thick cover of the conifers!)

Right - have you got some comfortable shoes on? Come on, then...follow me!

(click on any image to enlarge)

Still green, but the beech leaves are falling

Debris from conifer logging

Fungi, feather, leaf

Oakleaves in stages of decay

 

A stand of pines

Logged pines left to decay in planned management

Multicoloured beautiful beech tree

Returning to the earth - the circle of life

Cathedral of the trees

Sunlight after shower

On the way home - looking across the fields

A sumach glowing through the gate of a private garden

More glorious leaf colour

If I need to post a letter - hedgerow post box

The Great Oak

Home again!

Are You Looking Closely?

Snails keeping cool under an old bucket

How often do we look, really closely, at our everyday surroundings? Do we take it all for granted, thinking that we have seen it all, and that there is nothing to surprise us unless it is in a new place? Today I discovered that there is an infinite variety of life to be discovered right here within the boundaries of Autumn Cottage. This is what I saw when I decided to go on a Backyard Safari, to get down on my hands and knees, and look with the eyes of a child...

Incy-wincy spider

Lychnis seed heads - see the seeds packed inside, ready to be scattered about?

Oooh, lovely wiggly worms! - brandlings under the cover of the compost heap...

A towering forest of new seed heads on the pampas grass by the pond...

Prehistoric woodlice - inside the compost bin lid

Who lives in here? Iviy climbing up the back of the old outside lavatory

Ant City-scape under the old door mat

A late last waterlily, down in the pond

The amazing mechanism for ensuring fertilisation of the acanthus ova...(notice the hairy stamens) and an already formed, glistening green seedhead - click on this image particularly to see the detail in higher resolution.

A Dead Thing (frequently catches - and fascinates, the eye of a child... OK - *This* (inner) child! - deceased beetle in an old pot in the greenhouse. Funeral, anyone?

Mother Nature has a breakdown!

If you go down to the woods today...as I did, partially to collect resource
material for a future writing workshop, partially to re-connect with the
places that give my soul peace, you would have seen that Mother Nature
has started to orchestrate her own Autumnal breakdown, which is as much
in the scheme of things as the bright explosion into life of Springtime.
Though the pathway looks gloomy, much minute treasure lies hidden.

Common puffball

We have had heavy rainfall for the past two days (a respite today and then
more to come later in the week, according to forecasts), but it is still warm
- perfect conditions for the breakdown to start.

A puffball in a later stage of decay - a multiplicity of textures, beautiful in their own way

Here are some photographs
of the ephemeral beauty that can burst forth from the earth as active
components in the mechanism of breakdown - the fungi that weave their
mycelia underground and beneath the bark of trees, only to show
themselves to our gaze, sometimes flamboyantly, as fruiting bodies. (No
scientific names are attached to these images as yet - I wanted to show
you their diversity straight away - the words can come later!)

And if you live in the Northern hemisphere, is there anything surprisingly
bursting forth in your own life, in contrast to the closing down of Autumn?

The inocuous mycelial threads beneath a stump that do all the work out of sight

Mother Nature is abused by Something Nasty in the woodpiles - the"excrement" left behind by local Yokels.

Tiny jewels - each only 1 cm across. Mother triumphs again.

So THAT'S who's Been Eating my Roses!

I wondered why Lily & Pippin were teetering on the back of the sofa, peering out of the window in the conservatory, when I came down this morning. Not interested in their breakfasts, they could not wait to get outside.

I looked towards the bottom of the garden and saw this  cheeky character, a young roe deer, reposing calmly in the flower bed. Reposing calmly after munching his way through all the roses that I have planted this year - most of them now have no tops, and no buds. Where's my (pop) gun? !

More later, I suspect - said invader was last seen in my veg garden - shooed out, but I draw the line at my new herb beds. I need to block off the only access, to make it completely secure.

This means war!

Logie Is Home!

Imagine, ladies - you travel from Africa for a month and a half, covering three and a half thousand miles - and what awaits you? Your mate and an intruding female  - with anything but a welcome for you.

This was the reception committee for Logie the Osprey when she arrived back at her nest this morning, having left Guinea Bissau on 12th March.

Read her amazing story, scrolling down for the latest details on what is happening at the old nest now that she has returned.

Watch the Birdie!

Visited my local "Homebase"  home store & garden centre this afternoon,
with the intention of acquiring some raspberry canes. I found those, but of
course always have to browse around whatever else is available there at
the time (the best items being those with the delicious label of "reduced"
or "half price" attached to them - yes, I am a stingy gardener!).

But look what I found when I rounded one corner - a little robin had taken
up residence behind some pots of primulas - and was sitting, alertly but
peacefully, on the nest while the rest of the world went by.

Thanks to the staff for putting up the notice and the red and white
"attention" tape. Wish this little family a safe time - until they are hatched and beyond.

Logie - You GO, Girl!

Sorry for the longer absence again - been laid up over the last few days
with a nasty food bug, gratefully kept company by wonderful BBC Radio 4
and a pile of books and reading for college.
Not without excitement though - for I am tracking, via the radio and online,
(along with thousands of others), the return to the UK of "Logie" - a female
osprey, who is at this moment on the last stages of her journey back to
Scotland from her winter roost in Africa.
Her tracking is part of the Radio 4 "World on the Move" series of wildlife
programmes on migrations - but you can follow her whole journey on the
website of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife.
She is just off the coast of France at the moment, with poor weather and
depleted energy to contend with. Join me in encouraging her on for the last
leg of her own individual journey - this miracle of migration that is taking
place all over the biosphere right now, underneath our noses and over our
heads - and are we even aware of it?