more autumn color

I planted this rich purple Salvia last autumn I think, and it is still quite spindly, but once it fills that space between the hydrangea and hebe, I hope it may look rather lovely

it will become a dark pool in amongst all these rich reds

These are echoed, nearer the house, by the pond, where the little waterboy is ever hopeful

Then, nearer still to the house, there is another flush of rich reds and pinks, an old potted rose and another hydrangea

If you turn, these colours bounce off back past the waterboy and the maple

to the lower bed where we started

Those russets were echoed recently by a brief visitation from a regular visitor, who trotted past the back door and scampered off down the garden

What a fine tail you have Foxy Loxy

Whoosh!

Autumn garden pleasure

Gosh, I’ve managed to get from Spring to Autumn in one short step, bypassing the summer entirely. Summer contained a wonderful trip to the Faroe Islands, which I haven’t written about, because life has other priorities just now, but which was a delightful experience.

My dear heart and I managed to take our annual trip to the Lakes, though he wasn’t able to do much other than enjoy being there, sitting quietly in the Lodge, listening to sport on the radio, and sleeping rather a lot. His family came over for the first couple of days, which was a huge pleasure. We love the area both for its beauty and because, after many years of visiting, we can just relax and not feel we have to do “stuff” though I did take a couple of short trips out on my own. Again, if I can manage it, will comment on this separately.

One of the greatest joys in being away is coming home to the rolling Downs and brilliant sea washed skies which are the gift of living by the coast. And, of course, coming back to our garden which is looking pleasantly autumnal. 

The front garden, which is where most of these images were taken, was entirely created for us from a shingle desert which had housed vans and cars. It was the first thing we did after moving here in 2010, when this blog started. Now it is growing towards maturity. The weeping silver birch flows and flutters over the bed, with dainty cyclamen at its base, along with snowdrops in spring. 

There is a self seeded cotoneaster, which is very happy in the gravel parking area.

An area which had become a bit bare, but has just had primulas and pansies tucked in to bring colour as they settle in

The nerines below the bay windows love the hot sunshine and are responding accordingly, along with the irises, now long past flowering, which are trying to take over and must be disciplined next year!

A happy rose, which clashes delightfully with the pink of the nerines

And at the rear of the house, our courtyard with my “slow trees” and other plants, again bringing autumnal colour close by.

A single treat from last week, taken on the one short walk I managed. The Langdale Pikes looking like benign floating giants sleeping above one of the Elterwater lakes.

A little light tidying up

It is that time of year again; days get shorter, evenings milder, and things need a bit of a tidy up before winter gets here.

Yesterday was the escallonia hedge by the garage/workshop. Virginia Woolf had a fondness for escallonia, I'm not so sure. It has the most annoying habit of sending out great long bushy shoots with bee friendly clusters of flowers right at the very tip. It makes the car jump each time I park it. My preference would be for the hedge to evoke the smooth and rolling Downs, but I haven't yet found a pruning regime that encourages this (the Woolf's gardener at Talland House knew better, but I'll bet bees never frequented those straight tidy hedges). I tolerate the untidiness because oh the bees do love the flowers. My compromise this year is to take off shoots which were tickling the car door and bonnet, but leave those long ones at the top so the bees still have some nectar. I'll take those out once flowering has really finished and tidy it all up.

It does look much neater now, apart from the Fraggle Rock hairdo!

Yesterday the Japanese anemone in the back garden promised me good gardening weather. Today there was less sun, but it was also cooler.

First, another result of being too tolerant. There is a veritable forest of little fennel plants gleefully sprouting in the gravel. They smelt delicious as I plucked them up.

One of my favourite flowers, Love-in-a-Mist, popped themselves here from next door, much to my delight. I love the straight stems and contrast between the soft buff of the seedpods against the dark fence ..... but they really should come down

After that, I created a little bower where cyclamen peep out at the bottom of the tree, and black cats snooze. Can you see him?

Perhaps here?

Definitely here!

Happy cat

walking

We have been encouraged to take exercise throughout this pandemic, for the good of both physical and mental health. Since buying a fitness band when I was still in work, I have made a concerted effort to increase the number of steps I do each day, when not constrained by higher levels of pain or exhaustion than normal. My first target, back in around 2017, and still deskbound, was 2000 steps a day. It has built since then to the point where I regularly reach my 5000 a day target and occasionally go well beyond. That won't sound like much to anyone with any sensible level of fitness, but for me it is an achievement, and tells me that I can probably manage more as long as I keep pushing, remain patient and accept that sometimes I won't even mange half those 5000 steps in a day.

We are fortunate where we live to have the sea within walking distance, and also very benign suburban streets where one can be aware of birdsong, the wind shushing through a hedge, low raking sunlight illuminating the leaves, and all sorts of interesting gardens to peer at. 

sunny skies or windy, the sea is always good to watch

there are fairies and gnomes of you look closely, I wonder what it's like when the lights come on!

There are so many interesting things to see when you are looking.

With the good of my health in mind, and with the help of the fitness app, I can now set myself distance targets and have managed nearly two miles on two different days. A long walk for me, with the occasional stop for breath catching and general realignment of aching bones! 

Appliqué

Finally finished my decorative appliqué homework, which always feels as though its not what I'm supposed to have done, but I've really enjoyed this.

I love having a muslin backing cloth, as it lets threads bury themselves, and gives you a place to work a couple of small stitches before starting to stitch - no knots, I hate knots!

Stitching it all down

The leafy light green block is reverse applique, the green fabric mounted on the back, with tacking stitches outlining the negative space that needs to be cut through from the front. I cut the red silt form the front, then blanket stitched it down. I chose the motif carefully to make sure I could align warp and weft of both fabrics and still have the stem at a sensible angle to extend downwards.

I used very sparse, stretched fly stitch to attach the orange "sunflower" stem; breaking this at the centre with a little sliver of blue organza to echo the sky above. I chose a stitch that echos the running stitch used in the sky, as well as the triad of the fly stitch.

For the grass at the bottom I wanted to make sure the stitches helped in holding down this very loosely woven fabric. I used a toning soft green silk, to blend into the sheen of the fibre, rather than fighting with it. Then I couched on some of the loose threads from the sunflower fabric to the left, using the same green as is in the sky, shiny and vivid.

So here we are! I think it needs to be backed by something dark, but for now, it's just a sampler.

Anny, you're right, it is rather Autumnal isn't it!

Now to the functional applique ....

London, the Downs and Autumn

This weekend we went up to London to take my dear one's grandson to the station to go home. Said grandson had been very useful chopping wood, not drawing water, but painting the other shed a deeper brown so that it blends more into the background of the garden. All very much appreciated, and we enjoyed having him to stay, but it was time for him to go back to the frozen north in Yorkshire, so he could spend the late afternoon kayaking at which, I understand, he is rather good.

Since we were there we took the time to look round.  The King's Cross refurbishment is stunning, a great filigree arc of steel and light which ties it all together and brings the outside inside in a breathtaking fashion.

After we'd seen grandson off, we wandered down to Tate Modern, now surrounded by all sorts of shiny new buildings cheek by jowl with the old.

We went to see the Munch Exhibition, which was extremely enjoyable,. but raised a lot of questions in my mind about the why's and wherefore's of what makes an artist's work notable, or worth seeing. I enjoy Munch's work, but the paintings on show seemed to me to be sketchy and unfinished, lacking the emotional resonance of some of his earlier works. There were also quite a few rather tiny, blurry photographs which, we whispered to ourselves sotto voce, might have been less notable had they been taken by someone else! Still, it was a good show and worth seeing. It's always a deep pleasure to be able to get up close to works of art, looks the brush strokes, the mark making, the blend and flow of the paint, feel the energy of the artist and then stand back and take in the whole.

When we left the Tate, we went around to the river side of the building to cross over the bridge to get the Tube. I absolutely love this planting of slender birch trees at the front, it always reminds me of Klimt's Birch Forests

 We crossed the Millennium Bridge

 Were amazed by the Shard

Then found ourselves a train to bring us away from the busy dirtiness of London and home through my beloved Downs

Once home I set to with putting the various bits of Autumn together - tacking on the left, very much in the style of Jude - whose videos are well worth watching if you want to see how her patient stitching build into wonderful things. Sadly her blog no longer has a list of links to individual videos, though they are still all there within the structure of her blog. On the right it all looks a little bit squonk but will, I hope, find more structure once the stitching happens. What stitching? Hmmm, not sure yet, I'm waiting for it to tell me, thought I do have an idea to begin with, and you can't go beyond until you begin.