The leaves have started to turn already. Just a slight tinge of colour, but unmistakably, a change:
Around six o'clock I went out and tended the potato patch. If there's one thing I'm learning from vegetable gardening it's that you must have patience. I have to resist the urge to fork up our precious potatoes ... they're still thickening up their skins underground. Every evening I go around and cover up the ones that have popped their heads out of the soil ... if you don't do this they will turn green.
I just cover them up with a handful of soil and hope for the best. In the meantime, something has been taking a bite out of a couple of our potatoes!! Possibly voles?? Good job the cats are decimating the vole population!
The other thing that damages potatoes is the slug. Here is one that I caught in the act:
Eww!! DNW!!
While I was concentrating on the potatoes, Mr. Downy Woodpecker was in the mountain ash, mocking me. I managed to take his photo:
We've also recently had a visit from a pair of Northern Flickers, which are also members of the woodpecker family. This happy couple were on the lawn, getting worms:
A closer look.
The bees are still feverishly working away, and it never fails to amaze me how the garden rotates; no matter the season, there is always something that bears pollen, and presumably something else that needs to be pollinated. The hollyhocks are still in bloom, and the echinacea and sedum have just come out. Mallow, oregano, thistles and of course the roses are still blossoming even now.
Bee on echinacea.
Bee on sedum.
And in the woods, a black toad crossed my path ...
The other night I was amazed and extremely privileged to see no less than four deer in our garden. They sauntered around the edge of the grass, nibbling here and there, then went on their way. One bounded across the concrete posts for the cabin, white tail bobbing as she went! I tried to get photos, but sadly it was dusk and my camera refused to focus. This is the only shot I managed to get which shows any kind of image at all - there really is a deer there, if you look hard enough! You can definitely see the catchlight in his eye ...
I wonder if this is who has been nibbling our grapes?!!
Never fear, there are plenty more grapes still on the vine!
I can't write a post about autumn without including one of the most famous poems of all time, which I used to know by heart, thanks to my English grammar school ... says it all, really.
Ode to Autumn, by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
