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Monday 1 December 2014

Still a November post even though it's December now....

I seem to be getting into the habit of posting photos that are about two weeks old, but I'd rather post them than not at all. All these pictures were taken around the 20th November, but now it's looking a lot more bare in the garden. Friday and Saturday were reasonably mild and I saw a Comma butterfly on Friday, but I haven't been outside as much as I usually would for obvious reasons. Now it's turning cold and having had a mild autumn and only really got around to putting away summer clothes like shorts a few weeks ago, I haven't actually even got out any winter ones; just wearing long sleeved T-shirts and fleeces - so it may be time to get out the woolly jumpers and long johns! I think it'll be goodbye to the last of the annual flowers this week and then I can start composting nasturtiums and the like, although I suspect the jungle of weeds/plants that is now the veg patch will not get much done to it this winter. But that's just how things go and there's no point worrying about it.   

The two ornamental cherries by my lake don't hold their leaves very long
but the spindly one in the foreground (Prunus subhirtella) already has
some blossom, which is normal for it at this time of year,
although the main blossom season is spring, of course.

Looking across the lake at the poplars and alders
(and a couple of ducks).

The big old cherry tree's leaves turned a lovely bright yellow for about a week.

For a brief period my Dogwood 'Midwinter Fire', which has amazing
orange stems in winter, also had fabulous orange leaves.

The foreground is my green Smokebush which looks lovely in autumn
and the good old Liquidambar in the background on the left.

This is Smokebush 'Grace', which has more colourful leaves in autumn than the
very similar 'Royal Purple'. This is the shrub I planted on Smokey's grave.

Liquidambar leaves looking colourful amongst the more dull fallen leaves.

Intentional Camera Movement photo of my Liquidambar - I think
people either love or hate this kind of image but I think it's great fun trying!

A fungi of some kind and a droplet reflecting the oak leaf
(if you can open it full size and are looking on a reasonable sized screen, that is).

Second wave of fungi appearing in the bark chippings in the veg patch paths - but this time
I have no idea what are the spiky things which appeared before the little 'shrooms.

French or Papillon Lavender - now this plant was a total surprise as it just appeared
growing beside a small Perovskia which I transplanted last year -
even more surprising that it is still flowering right now on 1st December!

And now some cat pictures..... looking at the field from the veg patch.

Harry the ginger has finally grown into his feet - he always had the most enormous paws!

I was calling them trying to get them to look at the camera -
Hallie did but Harry's obviously seen something more interesting.

Meanwhile Bertie was having a bit of a half snooze and wasn't in the mood to look at me either.
Cats!

I've now had 2.5 weeks of chemo and radiotherapy with another 3 weeks to go. I'm feeling quite up and down which I guess is to be expected, so when you see a blog post from me you know I am feeling OK enough to get my photos sorted and posted! The most annoying thing last week was going to the hospital on Friday for the last 'zap' of the week at 6pm, hanging around for half an hour wondering what was going on, only to find out that the radiotherapy machine had broken down. I've actually felt reasonably well 3 out of the last 4 days, so cross fingers for more 'good' days...... and getting out with my camera! :-)
 

22 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for taking the time to keep us up to date on your garden. I predict you are going to be addicted to fungi from now on! Please keep an eye on those spiky things. I'm really curious. Loved seeing how big the cats are now :-)

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    1. Thanks again Marianne and I'm surprised that you didn't know what the spiky fungi things were - I was rather counting on you! I will ask our mutual fungi friends on facebook. They've been and gone now (the spiky things that is, not the friends!). Yep the cats are big although Bertie is still a skinny little runt and weighs more than 2lbs less than his brother. :-)

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  2. Beautiful Autumn photos Mandy and wow how your cats have grown.
    I wonder how our surrogate cat is doing in Greeenford, we left it in the hands of the new owners of our house there as it really wasn't our cat even though it thought it was.
    Fingers crossed for more good days for you and we hope your other half is bearing up too with all the driving etc...
    Love Philippa and Alan

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    1. Hi Philippa - I still call them the kittens even though they are about 19 months old now. I do hope someone will care for your old surrogate cat - it's bad enough when you move and hope the new owners will feed the garden birds, let alone a stray cat that's adopted you. K is doing OK apart from a bad back, which is getting better, and he did some vacuuming for me this morning because when I did some on Friday, I then ended up spending (wasting) the next day in bed feeling really tired and he got cross with me.... :-) Thankfully it's only about 35 mins to the hospital at St Gregoire. Take care you two and lots of love. xx

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    2. Don't worry about our old surrogate cat, it went from house to house when we were still in London so I'm sure it is still doing the same.
      Sorry to hear about K's bad back but good that it is getting better. I suppose your treatment will leave you feeling very tired but it will be worth it in the long term.
      Lots of love from us two and looking forward to seeing you at Lydford in the Spring for a walk through the gorge followed by a massive cream tea with your home made jam!

      xx

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    3. That's good to know, Philippa, about the cat! K's a lot better now - think he overdid it with raking up wet leaves. If it's dry then the ride on mower is great for collecting them but we had a lot of rain when the leaves were all dropping like mad. We make leaf mould from our leaves which I mix with garden compost for all sorts of things.

      I still have raspberries in the freezer waiting for me to make raspberry seedless jam - maybe I'll feel well enough in January to make it. I already made strawb jam and greengage jam and a mixed fruit chutney with some damsons before I got too unwell to do any more. So I'll have something to bring over with me and looking forward to it! :-) xx

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    4. You will love it at the Gorge Mandy, they have a lovely bird hide where you can sit in comfort and watch all sorts of wild life.
      Alan's enjoying watching all sorts of bodies as there is a house across the way that is let out to people such as Hen Parties etc.. They have a hot tub and it's often full of frolicking women even when it's bloody freezing, as it is this evening!

      Enjoy your therapy free weekend and take care.
      Love Philippa xx

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    5. So I bet that Alan has bought some binocs for his bird watching activities then? hahaha that did make me laugh. I would love your gorge with a hide - maybe you will get into the right kind of bird watching yourself - lots more interesting than Alan's kind! :-)
      Cheers Philippa and have a great weekend yourself. xx

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  3. Hope to see many more posts then Mandy.
    Yes its getting quite a bit colder here, single figure Celsius.
    It doesn't matter about time relevancy with photos, especially if you can't get out sometimes. I save a few posts up for bad weather days.

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    1. Hi Roy - I also have plenty of backup photos for the depths of winter! One of the weather forecasts I looked at showed snow this week but I jolly hope not! Thanks very much and take care. xx

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  4. Lovely photos Mandy, it's nice to see the last few colours Autumn in your garden..
    Amanda xx

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    1. Hi Amanda and thank you. There are still a few more colourful leaves and the Liquidambar is still looking good, although far fewer leaves now. I feel they will be dropping very soon though! xx

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  5. Beautiful photos sweetie...
    Good to see you posting and feeling well enough to do so..

    xox

    April

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    1. Hiya April - your comment appeared just as I was replying to the others! Thanks very much and I'll see you on facebook. mwah mwah xx :-)

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  6. There ya go Mandy...lots of wonderful autumnal images ;-) Your garden actually looks great to my eyes with lots of interest still. It must be a constant joy to you, as well as being hard work of course. Good luck with your continuing therapy and here's to more of the good days...

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    1. Thank you JJ - of course the garden looks like an overgrown jungle and mess right now, but not a lot I can do about it and who cares cos it's not growing season any more! Hopefully I'll get around to a bit of a tidy up in January. The mess in the flower beds is usually left until about February anyway cos our insect friends need shelter to overwinter in, and birds eat some of the flower seeds.

      Still not had any frosts even though originally the forecast had said about -1C around now but that hasn't happened, so maybe the last few flowers will continue for a bit longer. I took some photos of them for my next blog post just in case they were a gonna! :-) Still feeling a lot better this week which I can tell you feels bloody good. :-)))))))

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  7. I'm so glad that you are having good enough days (sometimes) to be able to sink your teeth into something that you get pleasure from! I am delighted with the "blurred" image ... prompted me to go on a search for Monet's paintings, that I dearly love.

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    1. Hi Kaleh - so great to hear from you and to be in touch. :-)

      I'm glad you liked the blurry impressionist type image - I have learned this technique from some G+ friends on facebook who are really good at it. I'm still a complete novice at it but it's something fun to try out. I love Monet too!

      Feeling a lot better this week and looking forward to the weekend as I have my two days off from chemo and radiotherapy - although last Saturday I ended up spending most of the day in bed as I think the week caught up with me and I felt exhausted. But I'm past the halfway mark now with the chemo/radiation which is great. :-) Hope all is well with you and your family. :-)

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  8. Lovely photos and I'm so pleased you're getting good days among the harder ones x

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    1. Thanks very much CT - it does make a difference and I'm happy to see the sun shining today and I don't have to go anywhere. :-)

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  9. Hi Mandy, love your picks of the cats, and like your experiment blurring the trees, I reckon you could go even slower with "dragging" the shutter. Also could try experimenting with flash; 2nd curtain synch, leave shutter open and right at the end the flash goes off, so that part of the pic is "frozen". if your flash doesn't have that facility can fire it manually. Its a lot of hit and miss but I enjoy the experimenting side of it.

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    1. Hi Ian - thanks a lot! I've done some experimenting with ICM but didn't want to put too many pics on my blog, but I've got a couple that I liked which I'll put on the next post for you (coming up soon......). I did try rear curtain sync a few times, but only indoors, never thought about trying it outside. It was during my photography course early this year when I was learning how to use my camera on manual. I have to say doing a load of selfies in front of it trying to get that blurry movement resulted in dismal failure in about 99% of my photos! But I vaguely managed to do some light painting that way, although not anything that I was going to share with anyone.... :-)

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