A peaceful Sunday

A warm October Sunday. Frosts have threatened with the clear skies this week, so we shall be gardening. Clearing straggling tomato plants away, sweeping up leaves, taking down the runner bean row and saving crackling dry bean pods full of seeds. Digging the last potatoes and thinking about what to sow next spring.

Last night, dinner in a friendly village pub not far from here. Our table next to the log fire where the carved wooden fireplace told stories of Adam and Eve and of strange and leering faces amidst leaves (maybe Green Men of the Forest?). An aloof old cat posing amid flowers on the window sill. A pub where village people have gathered for three hundred years.



A last bowl of squashes and tomatoes from the garden. These made a good soup, along with onions from the veg patch and garlic grown on the nearby Isle of Wight.



Wild mallow and evening primrose have found an empty space at the end of a row of spinach.



Last autumn raspberries ripen in the fruit cage.



A Red Admiral butterfly ( a shortening of its old name, Red Admirable)feeds upon the flowers of ivy in our high garden hedge. All around it, honey bees, bumble bees and wasps buzz and feast upon this late summer flowering. Later, the flowers will become clusters of black fruit for winter birds to feed on.