Seeking the sun

At this time of year, a little sun goes a long way.  We’ve had no further frosts since the last post; there was one major storm which mostly passed us by, although it rained heavily here for a couple of days and caused serious flooding in other parts of the country, but otherwise we’ve had enough dry, and occasionally sunny, days to get on with things in the garden.  When the sun is out, it’s lovely, but in the shade and after sunset it’s another story. 

The wildlife has been enjoying the sun.  Now that the ivy flowers are over, the red admiral butterflies have been sunning themselves on and around the cooking apple tree; I counted nine at one point, and there was a comma as well.  Red admirals don’t generally overwinter in this country, so once the cold weather comes, their days will be numbered; but they’re making the most of the sun while they can.

Red admirals on the fallen apples ...

... and sunning themselves on the tree trunk

Comma butterfly

... and other insects were enjoying the sun too

We’ve also seen woodpigeons enjoying a nice sit down in the sun on the lawn, one of them stretching its wings to catch as much of the warmth as possible.  Lefty has been coming back daily, for a drink on the patio, a quick peck around at whatever crumbs have been left by the sparrows, or a spot of sunbathing on the grass, though he’s still wary of us.  It’s not clear whether his lady is still ‘his’ or not; we haven’t seen them together.

The first of the Scandi-avians were spotted at the weekend, here in search of (slightly) warmer weather; just a few fieldfares and a couple of redwings, high in the hawthorn tree, but as autumn progresses we’ll be seeing more of them.  And there are suddenly four blackbirds, which may or may not be migrants, visiting us (after weeks of seeing hardly any); some blackbirds also come to the UK for the winter.

The big attraction for all of these is the abundance of fruit in this garden.  There’s the usual enormous quantity of apples; the cooking apple tree has produced a whopping harvest again, and the fallen fruit is attracting the butterflies and birds.  There has also been a good crop of eating apples, nearly all of which have now been picked and stored, and the remainder checked daily for bird or insect damage (there have been a lot of wasps this year, plus a large wasp-like insect which I take to be a hornet).  Surprisingly, we’ve had the biggest pear crop ever: eleven pears, which we picked to keep them from the insects (some had already been attacked).

the pear crop (one was already in the kitchen)

Jobs done this past few days in the garden: the windowbox replanted for winter (the little euonymus and the two rosemaries, that were in there last winter, have been put back, with the ‘Tete-a-tete’ daffodils and ‘Blue Pearl’ crocuses); the newly purchased ‘Elka’ daffodils and Crocus angustifolius planted up in a pot (and protected to stop the squirrel and blackbirds from rooting around in the compost); the last tomato plants in the greenhouse cut down; ditto the lettuces that had run to seed, and the summer beans; the broad bean seedlings from the cold frame planted out; and the garlic cloves put in the ground. 

And the nerine count is now thirteen.