Last Saturday I posted a photo of the little Japanese Maple still bearing its flame red leaves. We’ve had some high winds this week and this is what it looks like today – what a difference a week makes!
Just a few leaves are still clinging to its branches:
The rest are on the ground or have blown away.
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Reads.
Autumn in the garden:
The leaves are falling from some of the trees now, but our little Japanese Maple is still bearing its flame-coloured leaves.
The Wych Elm leaves are a glorious golden colour.
And in our little wood the ground is now a carpet of rustling brown leaves.
Finally, here’s D up a ladder doing repairs to the roof – I had to watch because falling leaves are one thing …
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Writes.
It’s been wet this week – too wet to do much gardening. This has encouraged the Ink Caps to grow. They seemed to spring up over night.
It first appears as just a small white mushroom which then grows into a cylinder with a pretty black frill:
But it soon opens out:
and eventually, having released its spores it looks like this, and then it dissolves:
It’s also known as Lawyer’s Wig and Shaggy Mane. Apparently, it is edible, but I don’t fancy eating it.
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Reads.
I’ve been spending more time in the garden recently and so have had less time to write on my blog. The garden has definitely been looking as though it needs tidying, deadheading and cutting back to do, and weeds are getting on top of everything!
So when the weather hasn’t been too wet I’ve been out there with my secateurs, garden fork and my dumper truck, cutting, digging and pulling up weeds – nettles, bindweed, ground elder, creeping buttercups, and other weeds whose names I don’t know.
The dumper truck is one of the best things we’ve bought recently and it has made collecting and moving weeds so much easier. Here it is empty:
and here it is full:
These weeds all have strong roots (don’t I know it!) and spread enormously with long, white runners forming a dense network. If you simply break them off they regenerate (I know that too!!). Even though I tried to get rid of these in the spring, they are still in the ground.
The nettles are difficult to tackle earlier in the year when their stings are so painful and they’re growing next to, behind, and in between rose bushes with particularly sharp thorns. What makes it worse is that their roots are the other side of the fence. At this time of year the effect of their sting is only minor and soon disappears and I managed to get at them better.
I hate bindweed – it chokes everything within its reach. I read in Richard Mabey’s book Weeds that the vernacular name for bindweed is ‘Devil’s guts’ – how appropriate.
I think I shall have to resort to weedkiller!
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Reads.
It’s been a while since I posted any photos of our cat, Heidi. She loves being out in the garden and these days she spends a lot of the time there.
Here’s a close-up:
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Reads.
We have a wych elm in the back garden. This year it’s been absolutely full of seeds, many more than usual:
The seeds have been blowing all over the garden, covering the lawn and borders. They grow in clusters:
One got caught in a cobweb:
Here it is in close-up:
Wych Elms are hardy trees and have greater resistance to Dutch elm disease than other elms. The name ‘wych’ comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning pliable and refers to the tree’s twigs. Its wood has many uses, including underground water pipes (in the past), boat building and the seats of chairs – it’s also the traditional wood used for coffins.
I love trees – and they are good for you:
A garden without trees is as hard to envisage as an art gallery with pictures. Trees soften the landscape. They provide shade in the summer and protection during the winter. A screen of trees around the house can provide enough wind-shelter to reduce by a tenth the energy consumption in the home. Their canopy of leaves acts as a highly effective pollution filter, absorbing many of the major atmospheric pollution gases, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen and sulphur dioxide. Research also reveals that we are happier and more relaxed when we are in leafy surroundings … (The Therapeutic Garden by Donald Norfolk page 105)
For more Saturday Snapshots see Melinda’s blog West Metro Mommy Reads.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
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