Clack-clack, grunt-grunt

Red sky at night

Clack-clack-clack, the fieldfares are back, and active in the garden again, particularly in the cooking apple tree.  Now that we've had a few frosty nights - more December than November - the apples are attracting a lot more bird interest, including the blackbirds and the green woodpecker, but I've picked quite a few big ones and put them into store.  The eating apples have all been picked before the birds can get at them.  Let's hope that the redwings can stay away from the holly berries for a few more weeks so that we can save some for Christmas.  A couple of sharp frosts have brought other birds to the garden, too, including a song thrush and a goldfinch; the goldcrests are also still about.  The clear cold weather has given us some lovely sunsets to enjoy, though we had the first significant rain for some time last night.

Clearing up in the garden is still underway.  A large amount of clutter, generated by home improvements and stacked by the garage, has been disposed of in a skip, and one of the big piles of firewood, which has been sitting on the drive covered for a couple of years by a tarpaulin, has been dismantled and stacked in its proper place in the logstore.  I was concerned that we might disturb the mice that had been living in there, but there was no sign of them, only the dessicated corpse of a long-dead rat (ah the joys of country living).  Our tidying up of the logstore area delighted the front-garden robin, who helped us by inspecting our work at close quarters and disposing of any buglife he could find; he's even confident enough to turn his back on us while we work quite close by.  Not all of the garden's residents were so pleased.  I was bagging up the ash kindling that had been piled randomly in the log store when I became aware of some bad-tempered rhythmic wheezy grunting from close by; it turned out to be coming from the angle between the logstore and the greenhouse, where some garden furniture is stacked on a pallet under another tarpaulin.  A peek under the tarpaulin didn't reveal much, but under the pallet was a pile of old leaves; they couldn't have blown in there by themselves, and my guess is that a hedgehog has made a bedroom in there.  He obviously didn't take kindly to being woken up, so I left him to it.  I hope he stays around; I haven't seen one for some time, but we do get droppings in the garden that I take to be signs of hedgehog activity.  There are plenty of fallen leaves in the garden so I may push a few more into his corner to help him hibernate.  I left him a few of the birds' suet pellets as a peace-offering.

I'm still trying to deal with all the fallen leaves.  This autumn has been unusual in that there hasn't been the normal amount of wind, which has meant that the leaves have dropped from the trees straight into the garden instead of being blown down into the field.  The leaves are too valuable a resource just to dump in the wheelie bin, but for the moment I'm having to sweep them into big piles wherever I can accommodate them.

Some late flowers

Down in the ash-leaf-covered vegetable garden, the broad beans are continuing to do well, except for three that rotted in the ground.  This worked out very well; I had had three beans left in the packet after sowing the two rows, and I planted these in home-made roottrainers (toilet roll inner tubes) in the cold frame.  They have now plugged the gaps in the rows.  There's garlic waiting to be planted out; for once there's a bed prepared for them already.  In the greenhouse, the bubblewrap is up and the heater on (my new thermometer tells me that the temperature dropped to 3.9C one night, but that's just about ok, although the houseplants should really come indoors now).  I've brought into the greenhouse some pots of freesia bulbs that I'd more or less discarded outside as they didn't seem to be doing anything, but they have promising-looking leaves so I'll give them another chance.  Out in the garden, the dahlias are still flowering; they, and a few yellow chrysanthemum flowers, are still providing a few blooms for the house (and a few last Centaurea montana flowers made it in there too).  We'll soon be down to the winter-flowering shrubs, though; it won't be long before winter is here properly.