The first apple has fallen!

Autumn is one of my favourite seasons; it’s so vibrant with the change in colours and I love a cold, crisp morning when the sun is shining. As for up on the roof, I’m not sure that it knows what’s going on.

A lot of my plants that did awful earlier in the year have come back to life and are flourishing long after I thought they had died back (well they looked pretty dead for a long time anyway).

For a prime example my sunflowers, and my canary creeper had a total of one flower all summer when the plants down at my mom’s were covering walls and went over months ago. These are now (aptly) creeping all over the place.

When I picked up my camera for this blog I did think I might struggle to get some  good photos which weren’t predominantly bare sticks, even though I had to do some pretty tight close-ups I was surprised how much colour there still was.

These Blueberry leaves are an excellent example not only of the magnificent autumn colour but also of the joys of cropping photos as they are pretty much the only two leaves left on the bush.

This is my beautiful dahlia that I thought would never flower, but it was worth waiting for and I have had some cut flowers from it too. As each flower wanted to grow directly under this one (so they couldn’t be seen from above) I sadly snapped the stems trying to show them off.

I bought these winter pansies at a car boot sale in September and they have been great. I will definitely get some more in for the dull winter months, and nothing seems to eat them which is always a bonus ...

... which can’t be said for my ornamental cabbages, which have been continuously attacked.You may be able to see all the cabbage white caterpillars all over it – I’ve had to net them to stop the pigeons, and the slugs really like them too. So the fact that they got this big is a great achievement and, to be fair, this is a picture of the worst one (to add to the dramatic effect, of course).

I’ll leave you with an apple up-date. 

The first apple has fallen!  I’m hoping it’s a winner; it has a few grub holes but nothing serious. Rich and I did try one early last month – I couldn’t help myself, I had to pick one. I won’t do it again – on the first and only bite our faces got so contorted it hurt. If you needed to bottle pure bitterness, then this apple would be a great place to start. So, fingers crossed for tonight’s tasting.

Happy Gardening!