Early morning sun filtering through the apple tree
The days of falling leaves are upon us. Storm 'Callum' passed through in the last couple of days, thankfully not causing the havoc here that Ireland, Wales and the West of Scotland have received, but even so, starting to 'take down' the fabric that clothes the trees and garden and spread it on the ground (and UP! in the air…and back down onto the ground again!)
So before it is too 'disrobed', here is a photo essay capturing the beauty-in-decay of the garden here at Autumn cottage in this second week of October, 2018.
Birch leaves falling and settling in a corner
The rest of the birch leaves...
The last of the beans...and vine...and pumpkins
My peaceful arbour by the herb garden pond
A sad time each year - packing away (but only until next Spring!)
Another carpet of leaves - already withered and brown - from the Whitebeam
The flaming Spirea
Sophia by the Summerhouse pond
Acer & Rogersia
Vitis 'Brandt'
The Cottage Garden pond
Waterlily & Hazel leaves ....goodbye, until next year. Thank you for your loveliness.
The last of the Pumpkin, Squashes, cherry Tomatoes and Runner beans
Just a few weeks ago we were sweltering in the hottest summer for forty years, but on cue, Autumn never fails to arrive and last night we were given our first 'frost warning' for this end of the year - so it has been 'all systems Go!' to bring in the plants - Pelargoniums that have been dotted around the garden and other plants (Abutilon etc…) that will not enjoy the colder temperatures. This had to happen, of course, on a day when I chose to make another batch of chutney, alongside a paella for lunch and an apple crumble for pud - so that the day was pretty well 'wall to wall' cooking .
Apple Crumble - a non-negotiable requirement at this time of the year!
But it was all worthwhile and now I have a nice stash of two types of chutney put away in the store cupboard (last week's Apple & Mixed Fruit, and yesterday's sweeter Apple, Pear, Apricot and Sultana).
I'm really happy to have the bigger potting shed this year - as I am also able to get a number of larger pots under cover in there - between the shed and the greenhouse (as small as that is) I should be able to protect most plants that are too tender to be out in the winter blasts.
Off to the potting shed and conservatory!
I'm a 'jam-jar hoarder' all through the year, so I've been able to pick and choose just the right sizes for myself, but it’s also been pleasing to put three big bags & boxes of jars on Freecycle and the local neighbourhood message board and have three 'takers' reply within minutes. What goes around comes around, eh? Lovely to have a community to share things with…
I'm enjoying the 'Golden Days' of early Autumn right now - those special days when everything is peaceful and I'm not battling to 'keep up' in the garden any more. I've brought in the last of the veggies that we have grown this summer, though the Purple-sprouting Broccoli will overwinter, waiting for the winter frosts to perk it up. It's a time of harvesting and savouring now - of moving back indoors after living outside for months and of clearing up the main room that had become the usual summer dumping ground - I guess, in preparation for Christmas!. Won’t be long before weekend fires are lit, the curtains are closed against the dark and the 'long dark night' pursuits will begin again. My revived interest in sewing and my everlasting fascination with family history will be much on the menu this year.
We've had a memorable summer and I've loved every minute of it - but now I'm ready to tip the Equinoctal balance and point forward down into the dark once more…looking for the treasures that I might find there as much as those that glitter in the sunlight.
There's been a big Orange Cloud over England for the last couple of days and I was finding it oppressive - so I decided to get away from seeing it all over the Internet and the TV screen, and out into the garden for a stroll.
These are the items that I found beneath my feet in just a hundred yards or so - to the bottom of the garden...along the ditch behind the fence...and back again. They provide a little snapshot of what comes and goes - and stays at this time of the year. I think I'll do this kind of snapshot once a month.
Autumn Cottage garden artefacts - From the top...
A Pheasant feather and a Collared Dove feather. A bracket fungus.
Two snail shells. A Whitebeam leaf, curled up by the heatwave. A Magpie feather.
Two more Pheasant feathers. Three Woodpecker feathers.
A decomposing Blackbird skull. A lichened and mossed twig of wood.
Aren't these small treasures beautiful? Even the Blackbird skull, which is slowly revealing itself. I will tell you more about that another time.
...we've got birds... We've got bean-plants in flower...
...but, worryingly...where are the bees?
We've seen the odd Bumblebee - and Buff-tailed bee, a wasp or two and even two Hornets (we seem to get one or two Hornets every year, and not yet, thankfully, the Asian variety...) but we have seen NO Honeybees AT ALL - and I am very concerned.
Maybe a local bee-keeper has moved their hives? Maybe the dreaded Varoa has struck? Or maybe, because of this drought, they are just not getting the flowers that they need to sustain them?
Parched, dried up Catmint, normally laden and humming with bees
I don't know. If it is the latter - I wonder if this will help? Two tablespoonsful of brown sugar in a jug of water, poured over some stones in a dish, so that any hungry bees or anything else (especially pollinators, please!) can 'fill up their tanks' and keep going.
In other respects, the garden is surviving - just - in this heat...
The Vegetable garden is looking rather different to how it was just a couple of months ago - thanks, in large part, to the man on his knees attacking the weeds! I couldn't keep on top of this garden without his help. The oil tank fracture 18 months ago put areas of the garden back a huge chunk; we could not but neglect parts of it in order to get other areas under control. But it is - and we are - slowly getting there.
April 2018 July 2018
We now have Runner beans, Broccoli, Rhubarb, Pumpkins and Mange-tout Peas all coming along; next year it will all be much better! (The perennial thought in the minds of all gardeners).
But still, I worry about the bees. If any of you, dear readers, have any thoughts or ideas - I would be more than happy to hear them. And - as always in the garden - you can find a glimmer of hope where you thought none existed. This is one of a pair of 20 year old Calamondin orange trees, which I foolishly left without enough protection over the winter. I thought they were completely dead, but did not give up on them. I watered them, and fed them and now, look - they are bursting from the base!
Miracles can sometimes happen - in the garden, I find they oftendo!
Fledgeling BlueTit, Great Tit and Blackbird - all down for a sip.
After several weeks of on-off illness, (Lyme disease - again!), treatment and too much enthusiastic gardening in the far too hot temperatures of the current weather, today I have at last 'given in' and designated today a 'Summerhouse Day'. So that is where I am writing from at this very moment.
I've been taking respite here in this shady, seculded corner of the garden for an hour or two each day, when it has been simply too hot to do anything else (We're in the middle of an English summer 'heatwave' - temperatures up to 30C, which is warm for this neck of the woods). But today I am setting up camp and only moving for food and drink!
I often describe this corner of the garden as my particular piece of Paradise…and I still hold to that. If being in Paradise is to live alongside and in harmony with all other Beings, watching the Wheel of the Year slowly turn, having the great luxury of time and the space to think and wonder about many different things, then Paradise is truly here, in this tiny, watery, cool and peaceful corner of North Hampshire, interrupted only by birdsong and a deeply welcome breeze whispering through the trees.
These photographs are my evidence from just the last hour…what do you think of my assertion?
Mr.Pheassie on his way down for a drink
...a quick check around
Sweet water...
Meanwhile, St Francis welcomes all...
Sophia bids you ponder your Inner and Outer Cosmos...
Eve's Apple invites everyone to take a bite of knowledge and learning!
Lord Buddha encourages mindful contemplation...
...and the many worlds of Being go on being, all around us.
Are you able to take a few minutes in your own days to stop, rest and think, Friends? I'd love to hear about your own special places and how your draw your own sustenance from them...
One of the briefest posts ever made, and I know I've been quiet here - but right now it is a case of gardening like mad to catch up with time lost through the atrocious weather of the last few months - or writing long posts indoors.
You know which option I am choosing, but to keep you up to date, here is a little stroll around Autumn Cottage garden on this gloriously warm and sunny spring morning - with best wishes to you all for a blessed Beltane 2018.
So many months of cold, wet weather interspersed with freezing, dark and snowy days - I am feeling so like a snail right now - head still tucked in, trying to stay dry while the land is soaked, over and over again.
The grass squelches where we walk and there is a small river issuing from the ditch at the top side of the house, which is happily wending its way into the veggie garden and greenhouse. If only I WAS a snail, perhaps I could glide merrily over the surface, rather than sinking into or skidding on the mud that now abounds. Perhaps I would be happy to be in this constant wet weather - not thoroughly fed up with the endless gloom and cold. Will proper springtime ever come?
Hellebores and tete-a-Tete Narcissi in the front garden
Well - yes, it will. Even in this morose weather, the Green Fuse is alight - plants are bursting up out of the mud, there was a dawn chorus worth listening to at the end of last week and - on the principle that it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good - or in my case an ill downpour…the torrents have washed away soil in the ditch at the bottom of the garden and - look what I found this morning!
A large section of what I think is probably a little Victorian terracotta mixing bowl; too small to be a Pancheon - a larger, bread-mixing bowl. I also think that there is more…I can see other fragments of something very close to where this piece was found, but - (intense irritation here…!!) - I can't reach them at the moment!! I'm being prevented from doing so by a water filled ditch with sides too steep to get a purchase upon.
I retrieved the piece this morning with a VERY long handled fishing net, so - as soon as the weather improves and the ditch dries out - guess where I will be looking? Perhaps you can see the other bits still up under the hedge roots? (just above where 'X marks the spot'). As ever...watch this space - who knows what else was tossed away there when broken? - and who knows what else I will discover!!
After the combination visit of 'The Beast from the East'* and 'Storm Emma'** there is a thaw setting in - for which I am glad. I have disliked the bitter cold (-7C and a freezing wind-chill taking the 'felt' temperature down to -11 here), but I have also enjoyed the element of 'shut-down' - suspension of normal time & activity patterns for several days. I have spent much of them either with my camera, peering out of the window or walking in the garden, or getting much thinking and working done here on the computer - which is in my office, the warmest room in my house for most of the day. So I have been able to tell myself that I have been 'sensible' rather than self-indulgent; I have been guilt free at not doing other, 'proper work', as circumstances have dictated events!
It's also felt very cosy and comforting to know that we (fortunate, privileged we...) had heating and lighting, and the basics of bread, milk and cheese in store. The cupboards were full of pasta, rice and root vegetables and there were more than enough tins of tomatoes & chick peas and whole racks of herbs to be able to conjure up curries and bakes, stir fries and risottos for a week or two if need be. I had also made three batches of soups in the previous week, so there was a stash of 20 of those in the freezer for lazy lunches - very convenient!.
Root Veg soup making in process
I've also been getting great pleasure from the many animal visitors that have chosen to come into the garden during the cold spell. Lots of them always live on the margins, I know, but their hunger has drawn a lot more of them close to the house and less nervous of me when I go out to feed them.
Happy to see *two* Moorhens back in the garden
I could endlessly watch the comings and goings of all the birds. As always, the 'regulars' - Pheasants, several species of Tit, Blackbird, Thrush, Robin & Wood Pigeon - but also the more reticent Moorhens, and, during this freezing 'snap', both a solitary Redwing and another solo Fieldfare - both members of the Thrush family, but quite distinctly different.
Speckle fronted, grey headed Fieldfare alongside a Blackbird
Solo Fieldfare, the last at the table when almost dark
They are both birds which I normally only see as a passing flock in the Autumn - Redwings in particular seem to have Autumn Cottage Holly Tree marked down on their passage as a place well worth of a 'stop and strip'. But I note, when looking in the 'Bird Bible' - our old copy of Readers Digest Birds of Britain - that during a hard winter, singletons or small groups can indeed be seen feeding with other thrushes in gardens.
The other visitor which popped in yesterday was the creature with which I have my biggest love/hate relationship - the Muntjac deer which plagues the garden, nibbling down the shoots of many emerging herbaceous flowers. Over this winter it has stripped a Fatsia japonica to a stump and chomped a Viburnum davidii (one with ribbed evergreen leaves, to be attractive in the winter) - also down to nibbled nubs. BAD Muntjac!
Our little Muntjac visitor, scavenging birdseed
The damning evidence! Chewed leaves on left...elegant whole ones on the right
But in freezing temperatures, when it is emboldened to creep up to the seed trays to nibble whatever it can find, how can I begrudge its efforts to merely stay alive? I captured just a couple of photographs of her yesterday (I think it’s a 'her' - difficult to tell as no horns at this time of the year and both genders have horns when they grow…), so as far as I am concerned, it has more than 'paid its dues' for food by posing so nicely!
The other visitor with which I have a fraught relationship - more for its cheek than anything else - is the resident Grey Squirrel, which carries out daily raids on the peanut bird feeders with impunity and costs me a pretty penny. I haven't even seen the squirrel in this cold weather, but I know it has visited - I found the evidence on the ground, next to the seed trays! Not unpleasant to touch and full of seedy remains that it had been guzzling. (Pretty sure it was that squirrel - though if anyone else has another ID - please say).
Squirrel (?) droppings - very dry, odourless and yes, I DID wash my hands afterwards!
Now that temperatures are rising we can all get out and about again. Supplies can be replenished, worries about broken water pipes, overflowing overflows and fears of floods in dark and hidden places are fading into the background. I'll be happy to see the springtime recommence its emergence - but I'm also grateful for what the harsh conditions (tolerable for a few days) gifted us, not least of all that reminder that we sometimes need that it is Mother Nature which is truly in control, how ever big we get for our boots in thinking it is ourselves.
I'll leave you with just a few minutes peek through the window into the wintery world of the last few days at Autumn Cottage. I'm happily looking forward to the sun and flowers of springtime returning again very soon - they ARE on their way and will be all the more precious now - watch this space!!
* 'The Beast from the East'- a climatic surge originating in a freak heating of the arctic, causing a deluge of freezing air onto Siberia - and from there to here!
** Storm Emma - an extra 'bendy' gulf stream flow, causing low pressure and a cold front to surge up from Portugal in the south.
The sky pewter, still full of snow, which, after a few hours respite, is falling heavily again. Swirling in the bitter wind, it's laying down another pristine blanket on top of the already soiled and compacted slush out on the road, crusting up the verges, becoming a fine base layer for freezing the rain that is expected to fall tomorrow.
The garden birds were frisky yesterday - hopping and squawking, tiffing and snow-bathing. But today - and after several bitter nights, they just hang about, looking depressed and exhausted. The now-solitary Moorhen no longer bothers to scurry away when he sees me. He sits down, instead, alongside the tray covered in bird-seed and pecks in a half hearted way at only what he can reach. (Has his mate, who always visited with him, succumbed to the cold?).
The cock Pheasant is still strutting magisterially up from the bottom garden bed; the hens huddle separately, down by the summerhouse and only come to the feeder trays at mid-day to fill up before retiring again to the relative warmth of piles of leaf mould and the convergence of fence and shed wall which may give a modicum of shelter.
The cloud of snow is growing ever thicker. The afternoon feed - bread, cheese, sunflower seed, muesli - scattered on the ground and up on the bird table needs to go down and essential pans of water need to be topped up, now, before the already darkening day gets darker and the falling snow covers all.
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