🍁🍂 Leaves 🍂🍁🍂

        Still sweeping up lots of lovely leaves . Soon the trees will be bare .

                      It's quite breezy today ..... and cold  .

      I'm still layering them up with grass clippings etc under the beanpoles .

               Going to bring some more wood in and light the fire .

                                     Peace and Love 🕊️🤍

                                        🍁  Debbie 🍂🍁

Short Charmouth Trips Away

 

We had two short trips away in Charmouth . It was good to get away from all the Hallowe'en rubbish and Guy Fawkes Night .

We didn't find any fossils , we didn't walk very far along the beach this time .

Considering that I don't do Hallowe'en it was rather spooky to find this looking up at me on the beach on the first trip !  💀

        Of course he came home with me ! lol !   

On the second trip , I found a nice stone with a hole in , which I thought would be perfect in which to burn an incense cone and the stone on the right .....let me show you this closer up ....

                         Looks like a horse ! 😃

     It has a hole , so it can be worn as a Neolithic-ish pendant ! 

         I wonder if someone from long ago once treasured it .

Sitting in the car stitching .          Stitching away the evening back at the Premiere Inn Seaton .

Stitching in the Golf Club Lounge while Ricardo played golf ......five minutes after I took this photo the place was full of men !  Pretend to be invisible . Keep calm and carry on stitching !

The highlight of this trip was that we both had the pleasure of watching a Kingfisher hovering and diving for fish over and over again into the stream that crosses Charmouth beach . Just here , whilst we were sitting in the car over-looking the beach . Yep ...and I didn't have my camera with me ! Drat !

  At least we both shared these magic moments  . It was wonderful to see it, such beautiful shimmering colours !

 Ricardo looked it up and apparently it is a regular visitor just here ! 

We took a wrong turning , of course it was my fault ..but then found Abbotsbury !

Unfortunately the sun was already getting quite low in the sky , but next time we'll walk up to St Catherines Chapel on top of that hill . 

We met nice church warden gentleman ( with a huge pick axe 😱 ) who told us the best way to climb it . 

               It is beautiful here ! I love this vegetable garden ! 

                            Can't wait to go back ! 

                Stitching in the car on the way home .

        Then home ......Cornwall .... sunny but turning very chilly now .

The sea perfectly calm .

Most likely with some rough weather waiting in the wings !

Lots to do in the garden . I am glad I got all of my most tender plants under cover before my hands begin to get painfully cold . 

               I need to top up the bird and squirrel feeders !

 Time to get out gloves , scarves , thicker winter coats and wooly hats .

Weather update -

There is some seriously rough weather down south of us , but they are saying it shouldn't affect us .  

  On the satellite picture it does look a bit close for comfort though . 

Update on the Poldhu Nursing Home ..... badly damaged during Storm Gorretti .

There is a huge crane and there are some very brave men up there dismantling all the scaffolding .

                                          So much of it ! 

               The residents must be very glad the work is finished .

 

            So that's all fer now my lovelies . 

          

            We're off for our evening walk and a picnic and watch the sunset .

 

                          Every day is a Picnic Day !

                               Peace and Love  🤍🕊️

                                 love Debbie 🌹x

So the thing is .....

 

The weather has calmed down at last and while the sun shines it is lovely and the Cosmos is still flowering ....

I have sown sweetpeas in here and sprinkled seeds from the Cosmos .

I will soon wrap the whole wigwam with frost fleece   .

    ......Dahlias and the African Daisy .....

                ...Roses ....

Osteospermums positively basking in the sunshine ☀️ 

Echiums are looking great ......

               ......and there are more Echium seedlings popping up in the lawn .

I will be lifting these and planting them in other places around the garden .

                .......Impatiens tinctoria ....are loving the sunshine too  .

                        Lots of buds still to come .

   By the way , this is not the awful invasive Himalayan Balsam / Impatiens glandulifera , that fires it's seeds like bullets out of a gatling gun ! 😱

🕊️ Mine is the very lovely and very well behaved Impatiens tinctoria / Dyers busy lizzie  .🤍

It grows as a clump and has beautiful white flowers fushed with crimson .

🦋 The bees and butterflies love it ! 🐝

I have never yet tried dyeing cloth with it . The dye is extracted from its tubers , which are rather like Dahlia tubers and it is used in Ethiopia by women who dye their hands and feet with it rather like Henna for ceremonies like weddings etc .

Depending on how it is extracted and mordanted the dye can be either black or an intense red . I like the sound of " an intense red " ; one day I'll have a bit of an experiment with it ! ........cloth .... not my hands and feet ! 

So all these things are doing fine and will only die down after we get frost . This is fine and it's just what these plants do .

However ...

I am worried about my Beauty of Bath Apple tree which really shouldn't be flowering now .

These will almost certainly seccumb to the cold as we go forward into November .

 And then what will happen ?    Will they flower again in the Spring ? Or maybe not produce any fruit at all next year . Such a shame because this is a lovely sweet eating apple . 

  The nights are becoming much colder now , tonight will be down to 5 degrees C .

I will be keeping an eye on the temperatures and get ready with my cloches to put over the Agaves and sacks to throw over the crown of my Tree Ferns . 

Poor old Tree Fern . It was beaten up something awful by Storm Goretti . I did manage to get all of the Ivy off it and it should start to look better next Spring when it puts up some nice new crosiers /fiddleheads . 

                  Little Monkey Puzzle tree is happy whatever the weather .

                                     Peace and Love 🕊️🤍

                                                      Debbie 💐 x