Autumn Colour.

Once the leafs start changing colour you know that Autumn has arrived and winter is just around the corner.

I love this time of year and we do get some lovely colour foliage on the trees but nothing like the autumnal colours of New England or Canada, it must be a fantastic sight especially with all the wonderful reds that they get. Our colours are rather more subdued, but beautiful none the less.

We had a walk through woodlands near Portumna earlier in the week, mainly beech, it was lovely and we were surprised how many butterflies there were around still.

As we drove around we spotted a 'Workhouse Centre'. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go into the centre but it is on our list to visit next year. The workhouse buildings look very formidable, definitely a place of last resort. Built in 1852 to house six hundred residents, it finally closed as a workhouse in the early twentieth century.

We also came across a very small village called Abbey where there is indeed a Abbey. This abbey was a Carthusian abbey.

The Carthusians were founded in 1084 by St Bruno and their annals place them in Kilnalahan sometime between the foundation of a priory at Hinton, Somerset, England in 1227 and in Beauvale, Nottinghamshire in 1343.

The Carthusians were an enclosed order, living solitary, austere, contemplative lives and they derived sustenance from the lands.

This was Ireland’s only Carthusian priory and was occupied until 1321 when an order from the General Chapter of the Grande Chartreuse was made to suppress the priory and move its monks to various other houses of the order.

Abbey is a very pretty little village,

and I love the retake of the 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' mantra.

 This week we also popped into our local forest, near Boyle, aptly called Forest Park,

again lots of lovely Autumn colour,

although the leafs are starting to fall we should keep the colours until the gales come, forecasted for later this week.

The upside to gales is seaweed, it's always a good time to go collecting seaweed after a good storm. Every cloud has a silver lining!

A perfect rose and beautifully perfumed.

We still have lots of colour in the garden and flowers to pick for the house but the sweet peas are just about over so they will now be pulled up and composted, it has been the best year we have every had for them even though they had a very slow start, but they have rather swamped the leeks.

Our late crop of mange tout peas have given us our first few peas, I'm hoping these will go on for a few weeks to make up for the lack of cabbages, for some unknown reason to either of us we seemed to have grown only half a dozen cabbages, already we have eaten two, and we both love cabbage. I suspect we had intended to do a second planting but forgot.

The carrots have done very well this year and we have plenty of them, some are huge,

one weighing in at nearly twelve ounces,

 I used that monster to make a carrot cake, one of our favourite cakes.

Ginger nuts.

We are also back to making biscuits, not something that we would normally buy, it's only in the colder months that we seem to like a biscuit with a nice cup of tea. They are so quick and easy to make, trouble is we eat them too fast.
Our young quail have now stared laying,

This large quail egg weighed 22gms

this was a second egg from one of them weighing twice the weight of a normal quail egg. Being short of hens eggs for our customers we have started using quail eggs in cakes, they make a much light cake than when we use hens eggs, I wonder why that should be?

Creating Space. ( Woops!)

Freddy and Felix having a play fight.

I have a confession to make, I am  plantaholic. I should never go near a garden centre or visit gardens open to the public, I can never resist buying another plant or taking a sneaky cutting, or  a seed head.

Lucifer and Rudbeckia.

The result of this is a jungle, but the time comes when things get crowded and need dividing, or the plant is just too big for the place that you have set it growing.

This bed needs sorting.

So I am faced with getting rid of stuff or having a new bed dug.

Thalictrum, it's so dainty and a favourite.

The new bed curves round what we call the herbaceous bed,

The overflow bed.

but as most  of the plants I grow are herbaceous we should rename it. I thought it might be a good idea to have a  fence separating this new bed from the veg garden and to stop me infringing any further into the vegetable area. Also the fence would act as support for taller plants which are just too tall for some of the other beds, it is supposed to be for the divided plants, to give them room to breath.

The hedgerow was planted just three years ago, mainly from cuttings.

Somewhere between the planning of what will go where and the digging of the bed I found that I had acquired several new plants, plus one of my readers was able to name a plant that I had spotted in the Florence Court garden, this of course led to an online search for this plant, ( Physotegia). I then discovered an online nursery just a few miles away that not only had this plant but another plant that I was wanting Sanguisorba Obtusa, plus other interesting plants, all grown locally so are acclimatised to our growing conditions. It didn't help that the plants are so reasonably priced, who can resist great prices especially when this site has excellent reviews. So what started out as a search for just one plant has ended up with an order for sixteen plants plus another ninety bulbs. My new bed just has to be the last one, there is no more space, or is there? Maybe some of the bigger plants would look good in the orchard area, but I don't think I will mention this idea to my poor long suffering husband.

At last the carving that Simon did for the garden has found it's home, now all that is needed is another one to keep things balanced.
Everything is so late this year,

Love this colour.

gladioli are only now coming into bloom, like wise Rudbeckia

and Agapanthus,

 the Tansey however is right on time.

One of my favourite flocks.

There have been so few butterflies this year only now are any appearing,

I spotted this beautiful Peacock in the garden yesterday.
 There is also very little fruit or berries in the hedgerows, I doubt we will have any blackberries, it will be a hard winter for all the little birds, and it's not been a good breeding year for the Swallows who have now gathered for their final feast ready for their long flight back to Africa.

Rosa rugosa hips.

The hedgerows are taking on an Autumn colour now,

Devils bit scabious.

lots of purple

Wild Golden Rod.

and yellows, the heathers are looking lovely.

The tomatoes are a month late and they are in the tunnel,  the outside onions mostly suffered from thick neck which means they will not store so I am faced with processing a hundred onions for the freezer, thanks goodness for my Kenwood, and the runner beans have had a disastrous year, so far we have only had one picking although there is still plenty of bloom and there's still time.

Not the biggest crop.

No glut of plums this year either but the soft fruit has made up for that. The apple trees all bloomed well but than the frost came, so apples nil ,but I did manage to get a few windfalls which I turned into

Apple pie, especially for himself.

apple pie especially for Simon after all the hard work he has done creating the new 'overspill' bed. ( Shush, I haven't told him about the new plants yet.)

Eryngium.

All the root veg are doing well, although we had forgotten to plant any turnips , the small white ones, not swede, spurred on by Monte Don we have now sown them, with luck we should have turnips in the new year. We had also made further plantings of the French beans, Cobra, and garden peas, we should get a late crop of both providing we don't get any hard frosts, these are in the tunnel so we are hopeful.

Elphin windmill.

Although our friends have now left we have still had a couple of days out, the latest one was to a nearby windmill which we remembered as a ruin, it has now been restored to it's former glory as part of a community project.

I love this roof which turns.

Old mill stones.