It's time to report on our doings of the last couple of weeks. These amount to not very much, actually. Progress on the house has slowed right down. We now have lots more boxes - this time full of bookshelves that John has to erect. Once they're in, we can see what else we need in the way of storage.
The garden is sinking into a decline as the autumn comes on. There's lots of stuff lying down and I'm not sure whether to cut it off or just let it go back into the soil. Other things seem to just be coming into flower so it continues to be very interesting. Next week I'm having a driving lesson in Shrewsbury and I think I'll hit the library to get some more info.
I'm loathe to really get stuck into the garden when there's so much to do in the house, but at the same time the house is at a standstill till we get the storage problems sorted out. AAAAARRRRRGH! It's all just excuses for me to loll about and feel sorry for myself. ;-)
We've been adopted by a family of pheasants. At least, I think it's a family. There are two females and two males. One female and male are definitely mature adults, and we think the other two are just now growing up. They're very pretty and John has been putting out some corn for them. The male calls everynow and then - it's very exciting except when he does it in the middle of the night!
The garden is also full of coal tits. They're everywhere. We've got several feeders up and there's a constant stream of birds (mostly coal tits, but also great tit, blue tit, nuthatch and robin) to all of them except the nyger thistle. We haven't seen any finches at that yet. There are chaffinches about, but they haven't visited yet. We haven't seen any green finches or gold finches though John saw a small flock of bull finches coming through up the drive.
The weather has deteriorated a bit, now. It's raining a lot more now, although there are usually bright spells in between the showers. Temperatures are now mainly between 8 and 13 C (or just between the upper 40s and lower 50s for our American friends!), which is just right for a light jacket when you're out walking about. We still haven't had a frost, which is a bit peculiar. Usually, we would have had a light frost by now. Still that isn't stopping the trees from turning.
We have a good few maples in this area and they are doing their fall thing and turning beautifully. Our next door neighbours have a sweet chestnut that's dumping spiky fruit in our driveway. The chestnuts are shrivelled and inedible, unfortunately. At the top of the drive there's a thick, wet covering of beech leaves and at the bottom we have a good coating of moss on the tarmac. Things could get slippery so we're going to have to do something about this soon.
Well, it's time to stop avoiding work and get on with something .... maybe I can put it off a bit longer by making a cup of coffee ..... mmmmmm
