Wednesday 28th October 2020 - Happy Birthday and Autumn

It’s a special day for Barney today, it’s his 12th Birthday. No cake or party, but the bin men gave him biscuits, he has had two nice walks, the first along the prom and the second across the fields, plus he had casseroled off cuts of lamb for his lunch. I don’t think he can have any complaints about his day.

An unexpected sight the other afternoon, when I spotted a Comma butterfly in a hedgerow making the most of what was for autumn, a warm afternoon. Somewhat out of season is the green alkanet which is also taking advantage of a warm although wet spell and displaying another flush of bright blue flowers. Similarly, the dandelions are flowering again, their bright yellow blooms at this time of year, a welcome sight.

We are now eating winter vegetables from the garden, coupled with those from the plot which I froze in the summer. An extra bonus this week was three lettuces which were used in lunch time prawn cocktails and sandwiches. The foliage on the Charlotte potatoes, growing in bags to provide new potatoes for Christmas, was decimated by the gales at the end of September. Not prepared to leave them any longer, Peter has tipped them out and to our surprise they have yielded an excellent number of good sized tubers. In fact, if the foliage had not been damaged and they had been left until Christmas, they would probably have been a bit too big. I have finished planting the bulbs, moved some primroses and split a phlox and replanted it at the back of a border. I am just waiting for the last of the fruit tree leaves to drop after which I will apply a layer of manure to the border at the back and the garden will then be pretty well put to bed for the winter.

Following the change in the clocks, we are making the most of the lighter mornings and once again getting out with Barney between six and six thirty. Today’s photo was taken yesterday morning. The sky, although not looking as if on fire as it often does when the sun rises above the horizon, displayed an interesting cloud formation.