Autum is a beautiful time of year, and the word immediately evokes images of shiny brown conkers and cosy log fires. It is a season of hot chocolate, red noses, scarves, woolly jumpers and thick socks.
There is of course one things that is quintestentially aumtumnal – leaves! Mounds and mounds of crispy leaves, glowing red, brown, yellow, orange. There are few things in life more satisfying than kicking your way through a heap of leaves, and feeling them crunch beneath your feet. However when the leaves are gone, November can look rather bare. However there is plenty still growing, you might just have to look a little harder to see it.
Evergreen foliage also provides a welcome splash of green amidst the bare stems, Aucuba and Euonymus are popular shrubs that keep their colour. Boston ivy and Photina provide a eyectaching change of colour to light up any garden. Of course the myriad of confiers come into their own at the time of year though if you’re anything like me the only one you’re really interested in is the one you hang fairy lights on.
Berries are the birds friend, and at this time of your you see them peeking our of all sort of places. There is of couse the classic Christmas-time image of holly and mistetoe with their laden boughs, but Pyracantha and Cotoneaster come into their best now and their berries will sustain many birds through the coming cold. There are still berries to be found for humans too, and many a hedgerow still sports an abundance of sloes. Gin, anyone?
There is of course something to be said for the delicate architectural forms created by plants dying back for the winter, their seed heads poised, waiting. Teasels and cow parsely look spectacular at the moment, though every fierce wind diminishes them a little. The faded beauty of hydrangeas are another highlight of autumn, often an improvement on it’s sometimes gaudy summertime appearance. Nothing though can quite compete with the magical, silvery seed pods of Lunaria annua, more commonly known as honesty, which looks simply magnificent.
What can you see growing where you are?
cathrinskey.wordpress.com 