Autumn Cottage Garden Safaris

'Twas Christmas Week in the Garden...

 

...and for all the squelching around on grass and ground, sodden and unable to absorb any more of the endless (it seems) rain that we have been having throughout the year, still the temperatures are above average (in double figures for the last three weeks or so), greenery abounds and many plants are already breaking into leaf and flower. Here are just a few of the pleasures of Autumn Cottage garden just as the year has turned, showing how Mother Nature is already waking and preparing to show her beauty once more.

  Evergreen Fatsia japonica and Lonicera nitida surrounding the coy little statuette

Helleborus foetida

Tete a tete daffodils pushing through

Clematis armandii ( now in a more protected situation) putting out flower buds

Magnolia stellata buds plumping up

Grasses, winter flowering heathers and evergreen fern all giving colour at this grey time of the year

The olive trees wrapped in their 'frost hairnets'

A burst of blossom - Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' burgeoning with flower - such a happy sight!

Another very happy sight - one of this year's two visiting cock pleasants taking breakfast - safe on *my* side of the hedge, away from the guns on the other side

My thanks to everyone who has visited 'Autumn Cottage Garden Safaris' through 2012 and especially for all the kind comments that you have left; I hope to post more regularly in 2013 - when Autumn Cottage Garden Safaris will be re-incorporated back into the main Autumn Cottage Diarist blog - call in to visit whenever you can - you will always be very welcome! (all posts here will remain as an archive).

A New Visitor

There's a considerable line-up of 'the usual suspects' waiting for food to go out onto and around the bird table each day now. (Cat problem solved by a combination of bribery and string :-) ). Blue-tits, Robins, Blackbirds are all regular and ever-less-shy visitors, emboldened as the weather gets colder and less clement for them.

But this is the first time I have ever seen the Jay on the table - he usually hovers around the far perimeter of the garden and shoots off whenever he sees the smallest human movement. Not this morning...I did stand statue-like for a long time to get this shot, but he must have been far more hungry than nervous, because I was able to catch him a-gobbling at the granary bread, cheese and sunflower seeds along with the rest of the little ones.

I occasionally find one of those iridescent blue feathers on the lawn - their beauty is exqusite when I can pick them up and wonder at them - but even more so when they are still attached to a handsome creature like this - don't you agree?

Winter Warmers On!

Well into winter temperatures here, we have already had a few nasty frosts. No damage appears to have been done to the olive trees yet - but with temperatures forecast to fall to -7C overnight (after a rather lovely, very cold, but clear and sunny day), I decided to not risk damage to the olive trees. So here they are, in their 'winter warmers' of fleece, wrapped - not very elegantly, but efficiently - around them. Fingers crossed that I have protected them in time.

The other pots in the picture contain an arrangement of purple and acid yellow winter flowering heathers and a number of different grasses - all bought in end-of-season sales, unwanted by the garden centres and DIY stores (who wanted to fill the space with hundreds of Christmas trees!) - but very wanted on my patio, where they are really bringing a touch of colour and form to the winter garden. I'm mostly looking out on, rather than working *in* the garden at the moment, but it does give my spirits a lift to see things still growing in the depths of Winter. (And only a couple of weeks to go until the Winter Solstice, after which, as far as I am concerned, Spring will be on its way!)

Brilliance in the Gathering Gloom

By 3 pm the light is already falling fast here at Autumn Cottage - but while leaves remain on the trees and shrubs, there is still a beautiful natural illumination in the garden. They say that anyone can make a garden in the summer, but that the more skilled gardeners can make a garden look good at any time of the year. I'm working on it! Adding evergreens and grasses can extend the season right through the dark days of winter - the greens and yellows lift the spirits especially high when everything else around is grey or brown.

It's time for a walk - are you ready to enjoy the glow of the garden here on a mid-November afternoon? There is still plenty to see - and there's a cuppa waiting for you when we get back indoors :-)

 

The front cottage garden - a few roses still blooming

The brilliant berberis - it was red last year!

A carpet of oak leaves...

The cotinus - lower branches clipped to arborealise it.

A rather bleak herb garden

Eleagnus and Lonicera nitida - two evergreens to bring the light into midwinter

Clematis still attempting to flower

Grasses, bamboo and a last scarlet flourish from one of the acers (but something *must* be done about that drainpipe!)

Back indoors - the last of the dogwood leaves glowing before they fall to expose their acid green winter stems. Time for a cup of tea!

 

The Berry Thieves

There it is…the Highclere holly tree (a rare species, with very smooth leaf margins) - every year, covered in an abundance of glistening red berries. And there, making sure that the berries last only for days are the Berry Thieves - at the moment, two very large, very black Blackbirds. Both with their eyes on the prizes, calculating just which branches will hold them for them to continue their vigorous stripping.

A rapid fall in temperatures is forecast here - down to minus 5C by Saturday - in which case, there may be Fieldfares to displace the resident Blackbirds…from my bathroom window, I'll be watching that space!

Apres le (latest!) Deluge...Take Another Point of View.

60 centimetres of rain in 12 hours last night - the garden is sodden to a depth of many metres now, after this extraordinarily wet summer in an already high water table area. But as with everything else in the garden and in nature at large, it is wiser to learn to live and work with it than try to battle against it. So there are water butts stationed all over the garden and how much more plants like to be watered with rainwater than the alternative hard, chalky liquid that pours out of our taps (and clogs up the piping!) - the 'good stuff' just needs a change of perspective, looking at things a different way...taking another point of view.

There have also been little thrills outside - especially when I discovered today that my first experimental root cuttings ever have 'taken' - look what the one inch pieces of Japanese Anemone roots have started sending up! These will be more Plants for Free come next summer - and we all know how much any gardener loves those :-)

Unwelcome chore of the next few weeks will be raking up and collecting all the falling leaves, which are making an ever thicker carpet on the grass - particularly beneath the old apple tree -

Looking on the gloomy side, collecting leaves is a backbreaking chore - but from a different perspective...oh, all that lovely leafmold! Just pile it up and leave for a year. (I'll show you where I store it tomorrow...)

And talking of leaves...this time of the year really does have something special to offer; the pond may be overflowing and full of weeds (a job for next Springtime), but look at this Acer - a fountain of flame - pouring into it...

Outside my  window,  a destructive river past my gate....

Inside the gate - this Sumach 'Burning Bush'!

Often, all it takes is a slightly different perspective to see a more tolerable view of the world, and though I sometimes have to look very hard, it is usually there if I keep looking long enough.

Leaping Along into Autumn

Just a few images from a wander around the garden this afternoon...colours change, the leaves fall...

...but still, there is the surprise and delight of late flowering clematis...

...and fat bean pods, left on the plant to give seed beans for next year;

The nasturtiums continue to romp away, swamping the rhubarb plants...

...and though many apples fall and decay, (those not made into pies and crumbles in my kitchen!) nothing is wasted - these wasps are taking their fill after the blackbirds have already enjoyed theirs.

The garden is settling down to sleep - on the surface, at least...but in nature, nothing is static. Beneath the earth, roots are going down, daffodils are already coming up - the circle never ends.

A Frog Who Would A-Sleeping Go....

We noticed Pip patting and poking something in the front garden just now - amongst the pebbles of the drive, far from any ponds - but not far from the water sodden ground that is all around at the moment. Off I went, on yet another rescue mission - to recover - I thought - yet another mouse, vole or bird. This is what I found instead - a very lethargic, very large and beautiful frog.

Clearly ready to be settling down for the winter, I took it down to the pond, where - with threee good kicks, it went across and down - into the water and the mud.

Sleep well and safely, fellow creature - until  Springtime comes again.

Heat, herbs and a dragonfly...

Humid, overcast,

Silver grey cloud weighing down,

A still, pink and purple,

Tranquil bee-hummed afternoon.

Replanting the herb beds;

Hyssop, Golden marjoram,

Monarda, Lemon Thyme.

Then - heard before seen,

Glinting, chippering wings,

Green dragonfly - darting, settling

Pondside oviposited eggs

Safe sheltered through winter

To the next, sharp yellow spring.

Dragonfly depositing eggs into sun dried pondweed

Beauty and the Beasts

I often take five minutes to sit in my arbour by the herb-garden pond - it's peaceful and so restorative to the spirit, whatever the time of day, whatever the weather. There is always something to see - this is what I have seen just half an hour ago.

I've loved watching the dragonflies emerging recently, climbing the reeds, squeezing from their nymphal cases (I've always missed that part so far!), pumping up and stretching their wings and flittering off on the breeze...but this one was not so lucky.

For some reason, it had not made it and had fallen back into the pond - already quite clearly completely dead when I discovered it. A shimmering creature transformed into an inert carcase. I only espied it as my eye wandered idly over the surface of the pond, from the lovely small waterlily, to the site of quite considerable activity around the dead minibeast.

Though one part of me is always saddened to see a deceased creature, in nature, nothing is wasted - my five minutes of contemplation turned into ten of fascination, as I spotted numerous creatures already present, all intent on extracting nutrients from the corpse. The water-boatman (upper right) was scudding across the surface to its target, with another (not visible) beneath the head, already devouring what it could access, several pond-skaters were clamouring around the eyes, and a newt was thrashing about, ripping and tearing at the tail end until it successfully extracted a few fragments of tissue

Beauty and the beasts - life and death and life from death... all in a few centimetres of water. A story of constant wonder, if only I open my eyes and look, here at Autumn Cottage.