With Lachlan on a new work placement, mum and I are back on dog walking detail. Autumn seems to be trying out different weather moods. Over the course of a fortnight we have yomped across the fields in the blazing sun, battled the wind along the river path and drizzled our way through dripping woods. Whatever the weather though, we are very much into the Autumn Collection. Every south facing hedge gap is ruby jewelled with haws and velvety bumps and ripples of fungi are this year’s “must have” sylvan embellishment. Walking in the woods, the silence is punctuated by the occasional tok of falling acorns. As the leaf cover thins, the late sun breaks through and turns saplings into columns of light. Young deer wander uncertainly across the paths and the hedge bottom bustles and rustles with half grown pheasants and fat baby rabbits.
After a couple of dull and distinctly chilly days, Wednesday brought sunshine also our last official garden visitors of the year. We mustered a colourful last hurrah in the borders for them. Cyclamen have started to peek through amongst the stumps of the old cherries, reminding me that you can never have too many! The tall nicotiana we put in as bedding are still standing proud (and smelling divine in the evenings) – they are most definitely going back on the list for next year. Even the roses are giving out a second flush. However, athough it has been genuinely lovely to share the garden (and a good excuse to make cake), I am looking forward to “Closed Season”. It is rather liberating to find myself free and clear to tackle any messy/moving things around jobs or just lurk indoors evading garden tasks. A vista of non-weeding possibilities is opening up.
Agaman came today and the old darling is burbling away, coming up to temperature just in time for some serious passata making. The orange bananas (I do think Keith picks his seeds on a “most silly name” basis) are fruiting prolifically and I’m sure there’s a few more jars to be made before we draw stumps and move on to green tomato chutney. I have chillis galore to dry and there’s jam to be made with all the black currants I lobbed straight into the freezer in the summer. Lovely, stove huddling, jobs for a dreich afternoon.
With the falling temperature, a day the garret is a now balmy delight, rather than a reenactment of a punishment scene from Tenko. The siren song of the ribbon case and button box has begun to drift downstairs. In anticipation of our imminent trip, I hauled out my old Singer a couple of days ago and got into the swing by making myself a beach bag using some waterproof fabric I had ordered to line the pan shelves (I ordered too much with just this sort of thing in mind..) I’m rather chuffed with the results and there’s tons left so……….. beach bags all round for Christmas perhaps. A cucumber soap experiment, which seemed an excellent way to abate the rising tide of oversized gherkins, has proved slightly less successful. Being gloopy, the cucumber slop was tricky to measure accurately (it positively threw itself off the spoon in giant blobs) and so the water content is on the high side. The bars are hardening at a snail’s pace. Oh well (rubs hands in glee) there’s nothing for it but to haul out the potion bottles and make some more strictly controlled batches, later in the month.
For sunnier days there will be bulbs to pick and plant for the spring. (I’m definitely going to redo the tulips in the long border and the library bed, I think the existing ones have rather pegged out) and Binny Plants have sent me an extremely tempting Itoh Peony catalogue. I spent a good hour wandering round after today’s walk in the woods looking for spaces… I also need to steel myself to split the orange hemerocallis, the lysimachia and the big crocosmia yet again. Who needs weightlifting…? This may be a good thing, though, as despite the bold intentions expressed in my last post, I remain very much a curate’s egg when it comes to knuckling down to the exercise regime. I managed but a single run (and had to reduce the hill profile to teeny tiny blip to get past the 3 kilometre mark) and three (rather more creditable) sessions on the bike since my last confession. Fortunately, the bathroom scales remain benevolent and in celebration, I have purchased a positive bouquet of new swimming costumes. Keith has also taken delivery of some red and gold “budgie smugglers” so Corfu will not know what has hit it ….
Autumn is going to be just delightful.
