The natural order of things

I do like to follow the natural order of things.  I was in Edinburgh yesterday and horrified to see The Dome, a huge cafe/bar/restaurant on George Street, festooned with Christmas decorations. Even the window of the Post Office in the village has a Christmas tree, all aglow with Christmas lights.  It's just not right.

The natural world has it right, though.  There is a gentle state of collapse going on in the wood. The bracken is beginning to lean slightly, and the leaves on the sycamore trees have completely flown away in recent gales. The lime trees are turning yellow and the leaves are fluttering to the ground, and there is the delicious, sweet nutty smell of autumn pervading the air. I love it.

At the risk of becoming a little repetitive, I offer a few more photographs of the autumn vegetation in the wood!  The colours are just too good.  The bracken is warm and glowing, especially with the sun shining through it 

I think the unquestionable winner for colour, this year, are the blackberry leaves.  They are positively sumptuous!

Now, before Christmas comes All Hallows Eve.  So I've hollowed out a pumpkin and it was my plan to place it just a little way into the wood, ready to be ghoulish and ghostly for when the children get home from school later this afternoon.  The light will be fading by then - I hope. However the logs I was going to pile up to get a bit of height were so heavy I couldn't tip them over the fence, not without killing myself in the process.  So I have piled them up and put them on the very edge of the garden, hoping for the desired effect later today.  I don't think my pumpkin looks very evil.  I might get a second one this afternoon and place that under the yew tree in the garden, where the light is dim and I will try for something rather more menacing!

Post Script : it would seem that pumpkins have not had a good season, and Tesco had run out, so there was no second jack o'lantern in the garden on Friday.  However the chappie above did the job very well.  He glowed and grimaced ghoulishly in the dark.  And his work is not yet over.  I made a pumpkin pie yesterday.  It's something I've been meaning to do ever since we lived in the Bahamas for a short time almost forty years ago.  Now I know why the Americans use tinned filling for the pie.  It's a pain in the proverbial to make, and I won't be doing it again.  The pie is very good to eat, but a custard tart would do just as well!