Sun and gentle rain at Coombe Wood

My walk began in lovely sunshine.

Dishevelled remains of seed pods by the pond

Golden fern fronds

How lovely to see blue sky

Some more red berries I hadn't noticed before - surrounding a spray of little yellow flowers.

Close up of the berries.

I wonder what these are doing in the alpine trough - they look like tiny grapes and weren't attached to anything.

Looking up at one of the hanging baskets outside the Coach House Cafe - a single skirted pink fuchsia.

Some wrinkled, knobbly berries

The sunshine lit up the papery remains of the hops.

A lilac coloured flower looked almost luminous.

Fuchsias with vivid magenta layered skirts.

More fuchsias - these look as if the hems of their layered skirts have been dipped in purple dye.

Figs

 Fish were basking near the surface.

The red berries I noticed last time for the first time.

The tiny bottle brush like flowers have almost all gone now and the seeds are growing plump.

This bright sapphire flower is only as big as my thumbnail and each tiny individual flower has four or five miniscule white bobbles hovering above them on threadlike stalks.

I clambered up the little bank to get closer to the berries on the strawberry tree. I found it fairly easy to get up there but not so easy to get down again.

While looking up at the berries on the strawberry tree I noticed some nearby pine cones because they were lit by the sunshine.

The plants in the prairie beds don't look as tall - some of the grasses are bowing down low now.

Seeds like fragile stars are starting to disperse from these fluffy seed heads.

One of the cats came to pose. I wonder what it had been up to - it has a mossy green patch on its tail.

The young tree with the big leaves looks quite small now it has lost most of its leaves. The tall plants around it rattle in the breeze.

A few remaining white flowers with egg-yolk-yellow middles stand out among the darkening seed heads.

Yellow daisy centres - a cluster of shiny brown bobbles in the middle surrounded by two rows of brown stars with tiny orange jellies in them, then more stars with identical pairs of yellow curls protruding from them.

Looking through the grasses to the shelter

The shelter from a little further round

Strings of berries

Back to the banana flower - another petal has fallen off.

Banana flower petals soon turn black

The resin on the Korean pine cone isn't sticky any more - I tested it this time.

The weather changed - fine rain sprinkled down and the crisp crunchy leaves seemed to crunch a little less underfoot.

A new batch of tiny puff ball mushrooms

A path through the leaves

Ridiculously red acer

I met the gardener - he told me that he was about to collect leaves to make leaf mold. A little later I caught sight of him through the trees, collecting leaves on a large tarpaulin.

Splashes of colour on my way back to the entrance

Thank you very much for joining me.