Foliage becomes more and more important once the flowers are winding down for the winter. After a good autumn weatherwise, we were blessed with wonderful autumn tints, I think the best ever. Most of these have been blown away by our first named storm of the winter, Storm Angus or been swept up by me to make wonderful leaf mould, to add back to the garden at a future date. There are still plenty of leaves to come down and they will keep me busy for quite some time, in the meantime I will enjoy them.
Foliage for November GBFD.
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Tagged autumn foliage, coloured foliage, deciduous foliage, fallen leaves, leaf mould
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Hanging on. GBBD November.
There aren’t many flowers still blooming in the garden, a couple of frosts have seen to that, but there a few stalwarts still hanging on in there.
Most of the roses have finished flowering, but Bonica keeps going.
Frost and Fungi.
Our first frost came at the weekend and our second was last night, but that didn’t amount to much, but thank goodness all the tender plants were safely tucked away keeping nice and warm. Frost though has a beauty all of its own, nature has a way of decorating the garden with little touches that make the leaves look beautiful.
An icy edging to the ivy.
A mixed bag for the end of October.
To start with, ” Sowing a lawn” . I have seen on TV many a time, the theory behind sowing grass seed, I have watched Geoff Hamilton, Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don demonstrate preparing the soil, doing the gardeners shuffle over it, sowing the seed, then raking it all. Now it was time to put it all into practice, where some shrubs had grown over the lawn in the back, by the gravel area.
Just a little area, but big enough for my first try at sowing grass seed.
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Tagged November flowers, reseeding bare patches in a lawn, sowing grass seed
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More colour.
Yes more colour, but this time not from my Acers. As the days go by, the garden has a lovely golden glow about it. More and more plants are changing from green to gold and a few from green to red/purple. I have been so fixated on my acers that for a while I forgot about the rest of the garden, today I made sure I went round the whole garden with the camera.
This view is of the Miscanthus malepartus with the border by the field in the background.
Acers are Ace !
The wonderful changing colours of the Acers have appeared earlier this year than previously. Usually I am hoping for them to change in October, but have to be patient until November. This year though, we had quite a long dry spell of weather, very sunny days and much colder nights and I believe these are the triggers that start the changes in the leaves.
Acer Osakazuki in the back garden.
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Tagged Acer Osakazuki, Acers, autumn colours, autumn tints, coloured foliage, colourful leaves
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Colours of Autumn. GBFD October 2016.
The sunny, cold spell we had a week ago has certainly helped to develop the autumnal colours which are now in the garden. Some leaves unfortunately have shrivelled and dropped early with the long spell of dry weather that we had, rain eventually came to the rescue, now we are back to very sunny days with much colder nights.
Cornus alba sibirica Westonbirt sporting its beautiful colours on the front drive.
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Tagged autumn foliage, autumn tints, colours of autumn, evergreen foliage, October foliage
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The Larder is Full.
Looking round the garden recently made me realise that at the moment we have plenty of food for the birds and small mammals to enjoy, in the form of berries. As long as they don’t eat them all at once, they should last for some time.
We start with the Cotoneaster up the front wall of the kitchen.
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Tagged autumn berries, berries for little mammals, berries for the birds, Berries for winter
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Winding down. GBBD October 2016.
Colder weather has been coming from the East and shorter days are making it feel really autumnal. Now it’s all change, with the wind from the SW bringing much needed rain. Flowers are now in shorter supply than previously, the ones that are flowering are therefore to be treasured. Come with me while I wander round the garden searching for flowers to photograph for this month.
Starting in the front garden, there are seedling Asters that the bees love, contrasting with the changing leaves of Cornus alba sibirica Westonbirt.
Red sky in the morning…….
Red sky at night, shepherds delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.
I don’t think there was anything for any sailors to worry about yesterday as it turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. A very cold wind from the east brought a lot of cloud first thing at 7am, but that soon cleared to leave a cloudless sky all day.
Once again I was treated to 5 minutes of a wonderful sunrise.
