Summer's lease

September is officially autumn, and, although the daytime temperatures are still mostly good, summer does feel as if it's winding down - dew on the lawn in the mornings, spiders' webs around, leaves starting to lose their greenness; cooler at night, the greenhouse closed up in the evening.  The plum tree, always the first to drop its foliage, is regularly surrounded by a sprinkling of leaves, and the flowers on the sweet peas are coming less thick and fast.  They've been providing a posy for the table regularly all summer, and there are still enough to do that (just), but I've also starting cutting dahlias and other blooms: this week a few 'Bishop of Auckland' and 'Ambition' (the only two to flower so far), with Astrantia 'Hadspen Blood', Cosmos 'White Knight' and a few sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis).

Sweet peas for the table

Dahlias, astrantia, cosmos, sweet rocket

Ipomoea 'Carnival of Venice' (with bee)

One floral success this year has been the striped Morning Glory 'Carnival of Venice'.  I planted a few to climb through rose 'Gertrude Jekyll', and while the rose hasn't particularly benefitted from being swamped by its neighbour, 'C of V' is doing very well indeed.  I hope I'll be able to save some seed from it.

Apples have just started to ripen enough to deal with any windfalls; a few apple tart slices went into the freezer today.

The mystery of last week's feathers seems to have been solved: some of the feathers further down the garden were darker coloured and I suspect the victim was a woodpigeon - perhaps a youngster, as there was a single juvenile around the other day and there are usually two in a brood.  Might explain why so many of the feathers were white.

Another sign of summer's end is the arrival of a couple of our usual autumn visitors - a squirrel, after the hazelnuts, and a green woodpecker.  This year's Woodie is in full adult plumage - usually it's a juvenile - and, as usual, he pretends to be after the ants in the lawn, but these are only a starter before the main course, which is apples in the cooking apple tree.  There are plenty there, so I can't complain too much,  Usuallly the surplus apples are kept to feed the blackbirds in the winter anyway,

Having said last week that I hadn't seen a meadow brown butterfly this summer, this week one - but only one - turned up on the borage.  Or maybe it was a gatekeeper (they're very hard to tell apart).  There's a good comparison of the two on this week's RSPB 'Homes for Wildlife' blog, so if I see it again I must take a closer look.