Autumn leaves

We returned, in early November, from more than two weeks away, to find rather more leaves still on the trees than I had been expecting.  There were plenty on the lawn, but still more to come, even though there had been a lot of wind at the end of October.  Apparently the second half of October was mild, which has delayed leaf-fall.  A trip through the Slad Valley early last week showed the beech trees still in magnificent golden leaf, and even now in our garden most of the leaves are still to fall from the apple and hazel trees.  Two big leaf piles are now gently and slowly rotting down, helped by the addition of handfuls of comfrey leaves.

It may have been mild in October, but after our two weeks in Mediterranean temperatures, November’s chill and damp was a bit of a shock.  Daytime temperatures are currently in low single figures, with occasional frosts at night; enough for a thin layer of ice on the pond but not persisting during the day, even in the shade.  A mix of blue skies and murky chill.

The garden is somewhere between late autumn and early winter.  The last of the Nerines were still in good condition on our return; they’ve been in a vase since and are only now fading.  The only flowers still really performing now are the yellow chrysanthemums, although the pinks and the Choisya ternata have had a late flush of flowers, and there are odd late blooms on the Calendulas, Gaura and a couple of other plants.  The winter shrubs are starting to flower: Viburnum ‘Dawn’ and the winter jasmine.  We’ve also had a good crop of toadstools in the lawn, which suggests a warm and damp autumn; and the lawn is badly in need of cutting, but it's probably too late for enough dry weather to make that possible.

The beans and squashes have been harvested (as I thought, the winter squash plant succumbed before its fruits could come to anything) and composted.  There were a few usable broad beans even last week.  All the eating apples are now picked, before the birds could start on them, as well as most of the cooking apples; the fieldfares and redwings are here for the winter, and the fieldfares are happily feeding on the remaining cookers.  We have a lot of blackbirds as well, so any apples left out are being pecked quite quickly; even a few left on the back doorstep weren’t safe.

The sparrowhawk has been around quite a lot, though without actually catching anything that we’ve seen.  The birds are in full winter mode, tucking into any food we put out for them.  Today we had a wren, robin, dunnock, sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, fieldfares, redwings, coal/blue/great tits, green/gold/chaffinches, lots of collared doves, woodpigeons, a couple of magpies, spotted woodpecker and a hen pheasant – not a bad total.  Sadly, no sign of our lame pigeon since our return.