Things I'm noticing this autumn...

The low sun making dark shadows and warped reflections. This is a shadow of the honesty I picked from the garden, and some of my blue glass bottles. I love coloured glass. And it doesn't have to be expensive glass. A Bristol Cream sherry bottle is beautiful when seen against the light!


For fifty weeks of the year the Virginia Creeper is a complete pain in the wotsit. It doesn't creep, it rampages, smothering the lilac tree and threatening the border beneath. But for a fortnight in autumn the crimson leaves are just stunning.

Firethorn berries. I'm told birds eat red berries first, then orange and lastly yellow. This seems true in my garden as the wood pigeons have stripped all the red berries from the cotoneaster next to this bush, but so far they haven't touched the Firethorn at all. The blackbirds always go for the Firethorn, but so far they must be finding something more appetising.

Dewy cobwebs. Isn't nature amazing? All the spider wants to do is catch its food. And look what it creates in the process.

Skeletal seedheads.

I didn't think the trees looked as heavy with apples this year. Once we started picking I realised how wrong I was. I took three boxes from the lower branches, then our neighbours came with their ladders and picked a further fourteen boxes! On the side of our house is what my mother would call a lobby, but people down here seem to call a utility room. For several days it smelt like a cider factory while I found homes for all the apples.