Monday 4 October 2010

After October Showers

This week brought days of heavy rain, dull clouds and a few bright hours of sunshine in between the showers. Saturday afternoon, after rain, I gathered some of the last garden fruit before it could be bruised and battered any more. Michaelmas daises were dotted with water drops as bees and hover flies buzzed from flower to flower.

Pears from a tree by a sheltered wall. Some need time to ripen in a warm window.Others are ready now.

With them are late runner beans; a few are still tender enough to eat.


Maybe the last handful of soft fruit for this year?


The wasps have enjoyed this ripened pear, so it can stay on the tree to feed them.......


....while others need a week or two more before I harvest them.


Rotting and spotted with mould, this pear attracted flies, wasps and a red admiral butterfly to taste its sweet juices.


Scarlet dahlias shine in the afternoon sun.


Climbing French Beans have fed us well this year, so the ripe pods stay on the vine to dry and give next summer`s seeds.

Stringy runner beans hide among lush leaves, waiting to give up their seeds. If they are not too tough, they will still make Garden Soup.


We share our veggie garden with friends, who are growing kohl rabbi on their patch. The Cabbage White Butterflies have been........


Rich, glossy leaved and beautiful Red Chard. Worth growing for its colour alone.


The last round courgette, where mice have been feasting for a week or two.

Someone has seen me picking runner beans........


........"Any chance of a bean for me, I`m starving......I`m always starving!"

"Please!"


An old horse shoe dug out of the earth.


Endive leaves have given us fresh salad greens for weeks, but they are toughening now.


Good compost for mulching a raised bed before winter.


Round in the little orchard, which doubles as a wild garden , there are sweet apples to pick........


....and Bramleys to gather and store.


There is a helping paw with the weeding.......


....and Old Dog pulls at grass with his mouth or paddles and digs alongside his gardening Dad.


The mole is back.......


Another bowl of apples is gathered from the trees..........


....while rosehips hang like lanterns in the shrubbery........


.......and the last Crab Apples lie on the grass; a feast for passing birds and foxes and rich with the scent of ripe, fermenting fruit.

6 comments:

The Weaver of Grass said...

What a glorious celebration of Autumn's goodness DW. I so enjoyed your photographs - your runner beans look marvellous. Up here in North Yorkshire the fierce winds a couple of weeks ago completely finished our runner beans before they really got started. Our best crop was plums but we still have anapple tree well netted which has plenty of apples to pick when they are finally ripe. Lovely post.

WOL said...

Now I'm all in a Fall mood. I need to get out and tend to my yard - now that the weather is cooling down, I don't have that excuse any more. . . Wish I could live the way you do, with gardens and animals and woods and flowers. Thanks for sharing your world.

Kate on Clinton said...

I love the fact that you leave some of the fruit for neighborhood animals (foxes!) and insects. We can't be so accommodating indoors. We tried growing beans in a window box, trellis and all. We got a few tiny beans, but more little gnat-like flies than we could handle in the apartment, so out they (beans and bugs) went.

ChrisJ said...

Ooof! I'm overwhelmed with sights, sounds and smells! You've really had a good year for produce. The last soft fruit looks luscious, and I'm afraid if I were there the dog would have enjoyed a lot of my time.

Morning's Minion said...

I enjoyed this post when you first published it, but blogger "swallowed" my comment.
I've just enjoyed the photos and captions for the second time. I especially like to see what is in flower and fruiting in other gardens.
The close and closer photos of the "starving horse" are so funny. Our dear Pebbles doesn't miss a thing that goes on in her territory--she knows the minute one of us out of bed in the morning and any foray near her pasture is an excuse for her to "beg."

Kath said...

Lots of lovely Autumnal images. I like to leave fruit for the birds, they get into such acrobatics.
The photos of the dogs "helping" made me smile, ours have to poke their noses into everything we do :D