Autumn ......
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| Sunrise at Chenevaux |
After a mild but wet autumn the temperature has dropped significantly & the days are getting shorter and shorter, but its not long until the shortest day so that's not so bad! And then it will be Christmas, yaay~! You couldn't miss it with all of the ads featuring fairy tales of some sort or another on the TV. Even here where Christmas is pretty low key in comparison to the UK the supermarkets have already cleared the aisles for the mountains of boxes of chocolates that appear each year. Inflation has obviously reached critical levels as chocolate coins have now been replaced by chocolate bank notes, with values of up to 500 euros! Quite funny because if you were in possession of such a large note most shops wouldn't accept it. Father Christmas probably does though with the price of toys these days.
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| Autumn crocus |
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| Acer leaves on the turn |
Autumn is always a busy time in the garden. As a result of watching Monty Don on Gardeners' World Mark decided it would be a good idea to make a container for fallen leaves/leaf mould, which will be great when we manage to rake up leaves and put them in it. He's also cut down a load of dead trees around the boundaries, and used some of the wood to make a bench by the croquet lawn. The wisteria which looked as though it had died in the spring has grown back, it will be interesting to see if it has reverted to a blue flower or if its still pink. Generally things have grown well this year, apart from the vegetables which failed miserably as a result of the colder than usual spring and being eaten by the wildlife. For the first time I bought tomato plants rather than raising them from seed and the taste was really disappointing. We have decided to move the soft fruit ( blackcurrant, redcurrant and raspberries ) to the existing potager, and then use what we call the fruit cage ( actually built as a cage for baby pheasants ) as the potager. As its completely netted this should stop all of our produce being eaten by hares, rabbits and birds! According to some friends their soft fruit is largely ignored by birds and if they do become a nuisance we can simply throw a net over the plants.
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| Lots of leaves for the leaf mould bin! |
We did a plan of all of the roses the other day and had a count-up - nearly 70 not counting the hedge we have just planted, which is another 20 so plenty of pruning to do!
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| Roses in the Farmhouse back garden. |
