Decay and new life in the November garden

Autumn is supposed to be a good time to get on with many garden jobs; this is the best time for moving plants due to the soil still remaining warm and allowing the roots to settle in before winter gets a hold. However when your weather goes from ridiculously dry to sopping wet, just when exactly are you supposed to do these jobs? Obviously during the time I was away in England!

In the less than two weeks that we've been back there's been plenty of rain, the lawns are now lush and green but it's too wet to mow, fallen leaves are too wet to either rake up or collect with the mower, but due to reasonably mild temperatures the weeds in the veggie patch have gone crazy! At long last there is autumn colour in the leaves and there are still flowers and plenty of veggies to eat, not to mention far too many apples. We've given away bagsful to neighbours and stored as many as we have room for in the garage, and I've collected, dried and bagged up nearly 2,000 walnuts (yes, I counted!).

The weather makes me feel rather blase about what needs doing and I'm probably not alone in not feeling much like getting out there doing stuff. I did manage to dig up a few of the perennial plants from my Pollinators Meadow which I want to keep, but as I don't know where I'm going to put them yet I've just planted them up in pots and hope they survive through winter like that. I'll worry about it all next year! I have cleared a strip of weeds and readied it for planting out my garlic, and am halfway through cutting out the old blackberry canes and trying to tie in metres of new canes to the wires, which is a job and a half. Most of this dressed in waterproofs, as even if it wasn't raining, everything is dripping wet!   

Blighted tomatoes. They'll still be blighted next week/month,
so where's the hurry to clear up?

View of the veg patch, a bit of a messy weedy jungle but still productive, although I have
still not got round to staking up my PSB which got blown about by the storm!

The annuals have flopped over due to rain and wind, but I love this carpet of flat leafed parsley
which is covering the area where I left a parsley to flower during the summer.
I may dig some up and put it in a pot in the cold frame and see if they survive.

Still?!! Bloody things just won't stop...... :-)
No seriously, I do think this is the last one. I ought to pick it!

Taken at the weekend when we had a bit of sun.
Top are Borage flowers and below left, Rocket and right, Coriander flowers.

The Year 2 Pollinator Meadow is still flowering!

One good reason not to tidy up too soon, and to stop deadheading the Cosmos.
These Goldfinches love the seed.

Away from the veggie patch, the stream started flowing again and the lake is already full! I had to spend an afternoon in the stream bed on the other side of the fence removing loads of fallen dead wood that I didn't want washed up against my perimeter fence, and my OH found yet another hole to repair to try to keep out coypu and foxes.

Ducks now with a little cover over their food,
as their pellets were turning to porridge in the rain.

Out in the ornamental gardens there are still some flowers hanging on in there because we have yet to have a frost.

Bidens, which usually happily stands upright, is now flopping over
the lawn due to the winds and storm whilst we were away.

My smaller Yucca, a baby that I transplanted years ago,
has its first flower bud! A bit late and it may never come to anything.

Some plants that have finished flowering still look good as seed heads despite the weather throwing everything at them.

Garlic Chive (Allium tuberosum) seed heads looking attractive.

I think the Goldenrod (Solidago) looks better now
than when it was in bloom. Its flowering period is far too short
so I'm not entirely sure I really want it in the garden at all.
Yet the pollinating insects love it, and it's still upright after the storm,
so I think it wins a reprieve.

Onto autumn colours. A week ago not a lot was changing other than some of my shrubs and trees planted specifically for autumn foliage colour. Yet suddenly in the last few days the general colour in the garden has gone from green tinged with dirty brown to a far more pleasant overall rich golden colour. I took these pictures six days ago and a lot's changed already since then!

My precious Cercis Canadensis 'Forest Pansy' changes colour
very early so by now there are very few leaves left at all.

Whilst the Smoke Bushes, such as this Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple',
are in their element right now.

And at last my wonderful Liquidambar has gone from
sad looking pale yellow leaves dropping due to drought,
to the beginnings of its true 'fall' colours.

Finally, you know me by now, I can never resist a butterfly! Over the weekend there were some periods of sunshine, and sure enough, out came some hardy butterflies. I saw three different species and decided I needed to capture perhaps my last butterfly of the year, this lovely Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta). (Even though I already have hundreds of photos of them taken over the last few years!)

Oh so tatty and desperate to feel the sun on its wings.

It did have a little feed on this Verbena bonariensis that had flopped over
onto the gravel, but was more interested in just sitting sunning itself.
I really can't blame it!

Some dry but cooler weather is forecast from tomorrow onwards and even some sun, so I'm hoping to get more done outside. We have a 'tree man' coming to do some work clearing some dead trees and thinning some others out, plus pruning our huge Leylandii hedges, so dry weather is just what we need right now!

Autumn colours at Forde Abbey, Dorset

This beautiful house, originally an Abbey founded by Cistercian monks over 800 years ago was transformed into a house as long ago as 1649! Both house and gardens are open to the public and are only a mile or two from my Mum's house. As she has a season ticket she had a couple of free guest passes, so when we had an afternoon free my OH and I decided to go for a walk around the gardens. The weather was pretty grim but given its closeness and the fact it wasn't going to cost us anything we had nothing to lose! I've visited many times over the years so I have seen it in all seasons.

When we arrived we were rather surprised to see trucks galore and soon realised there was a film crew there. At the ticket office we were informed that a movie remake of "Far From the Madding Crowd" was being filmed. Thankfully the gardens were still open and in fact we had to walk past loads of actors/extras in period costume to get to the gardens around the front of the house. We didn't find out until we left which actors were starring in it; nobody that I know apart from a couple of people I've vaguely heard of. Thank goodness it wasn't Colin Firth is all I can say, or I'd have spent all afternoon hanging around trying to get a glimpse of him! I actually remember the film from decades ago starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates but don't know the story line at all as I saw it when I was too young to make sense of it.

What I was surprised and pleased to see were the amount of pretty autumn colours here - a total contrast from higher up where Mum lives. We were told that this valley is in fact in quite a frost pocket which may explain some of the more native plants having already coloured up, but as it's a public garden with an arboretum it is not surprising that they also have many non native trees which have splendid autumn colours.

The back of the house with a huge walled kitchen garden with fruit, vegetables and flowers.

We weren't supposed to take photos but hey I've got a superzoom 'paparazzi' camera
so nobody noticed me taking this from a distance..... :-)

View uphill from the bog garden.

Yours truly!

View over the Great Pond from the bog garden.

Farmland behind the gardens looking very English to me.

There were loads of flowers still in bloom.

The Mermaid Pond.

A Japanese Maple starting to change colour,
and I can just about see a face in that bark behind.

No idea what the fungi is but it looks interesting.

There are extensive rock gardens which were still very colourful.

I see faces in these flower buds! I think it's a flowering sage of some kind.

Dahlias and more Dahlias.

The annoying thing about the filming is that the front of the building was covered in
scaffolding with lighting rigs and people, vans and trucks all in the way.

I've no idea what most of the trees in the arboretum section were but it was
wonderful to see so many trees and shrubs starting to turn beautiful colours.

There were also plenty of trees with berries too which brightened up a dull day!

All in all a lovely visit despite grey skies.

Their website, showing what it looks like through the seasons, and with blue sky! http://www.fordeabbey.co.uk/

Sometimes the sun actually shines when I'm in England!

To be fair, I'm usually there out of season but it was lovely on our first day in Somerset, to have wall to wall blue sky and sunshine. After pottering about in Mum's garden in the morning we spent the afternoon wandering around local footpaths and country lanes. It was good to see so many wildflowers still going strong, lots of colourful flowers in people's gardens, and berries, fruit and even some flowers in the hedgerows for the wildlife. It was just as green there as at home, with just a hint of autumn in the tree colours. Glorious views over the countryside and mild weather. I just wish the rest of my stay in England had been like this, but in October that really is wishful thinking!

I added this first photo as I found it amusing. Just before we hit the open field we noticed this rotting car in a wild overgrown patch at the end of the lane. It's not just in France where you find old cars like this rusting away in the corners of people's property (this was actually private land). It's just that this isn't a Citroen 2CV!

Rotting corpse, but maybe good for birds to nest in!

Now this has to be the most tidy, best kept public footpath I've ever seen;
ditto the poshest sheep fencing in the universe!

Green! Nice for us to see sheep about as they are not really farmed much in Brittany;
only private individuals keep a few sheep for their own needs.

There were plenty of Commas (Polygonia c-album) about.
With their wings closed they often look just boring brown,
but look close up and there are all sorts
of pretty markings on the underside of their wings.

I would never have known what these were if I had not read
Rosie Nixon's Leavesnbloom blog post about them!
They are Bedeguar galls also known as Robin's Pincushions, on dog rose (Rosa canina).

Just a nice view.

Much excitement when this beautiful dragonfly settled on the hedgerow
right in front of me and was quite happy for me to take loads of photos of it!

It's a female Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) and whilst I see the males of this species
at home very often, they never, ever stop their continual flying around my pond and garden!

It was perhaps not surprising that it was there, because just behind that hedge
was this beautiful ornamental pond. There was a gateway in the hedge
so I managed to sneak a picture over the gate.

Along the way I stopped to watch a family of Long Tailed Tits (Aegithalos caudatus)
on a tree that had lost most of its leaves.

It was surprising to see in some places blackberries only in flower!
Certainly the pollinators such as this bee were enjoying the nectar and pollen.

Farmhouse at the end of the open field part of the walk - I guess they keep pigeons!
(And just look at that sky!!! I haven't done anything to enhance the colour).

Back out on the lane and a lovely berry laden tree
above the house name sign.

Still Yarrow flowering and it had attracted this
Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) butterfly.

It seemed to me to be rather late in the season for blackberries,
but not a bad thing for the Comma (Polygonia c-album) butterflies
and other wildlife enjoying eating them.

Typical narrow lane on the way back to the village.
Woe betide you if you are in a car and meet a tractor or worse, a milk tanker!
However there are usually passing places here and there.

Back in the village and a picture of the church.

We took another footpath which goes right through the church grounds.

And past a second cemetary a few fields away with this
magnificent Monkey Puzzle tree and glorious views.
Not a bad position for your final resting place!