188 weeks and 6 days | Autumn in the garden

Autumn crept up without me really noticing.

Most of the deciduous trees, in our area, still have most of their foliage which is a little strange for this time of year.

Often by now there’s a crunchy carpet of leaves underfoot. Usually by mid October, everything’s starting to look a little more stark than it did today.

Plus it’s been really mild over the last few weeks. I’ve been pretending it’s late summer — still wearing flip-flops rather than my favourite boots — but if I’m sitting still working, for long periods in my she shed, things have a tendency to get quite chilly after a while.

A sure sign that summer has exited — stage door right.

When I went to feed the chickens this morning I thought how green everything looked.

Then the more I looked, I could see colour everywhere.

Purple, magenta, rust and ochre — literally the garden is a riot of colour at the mo.

I tend to favour the cooler end of the spectrum when it comes to planting; so we have lots of white and lilac, blue and pinks, in the flower borders, which is restful on the eye throughout the summer.

Then as everything begins to die back for the winter, the plants show off in bright autumnal shades, as if to mark their last hurrah.

In a few week’s time it will all be gone.

The garden will lose it’s colour and sparkle, as winter takes a hold, and everything will be brown.

I’m not a fan of the colder months — I don’t like dark, short days — I loathe the cold and damp.

And I love colour so much, that I find it quite depressing to look outside and see very little of it.

But hey. No need to worry about that quite yet.

Not when the garden is putting on such a show.