September 1st - early morning walk (Coombe Wood)

My car was the first car in the car park.

The pond has a cloudy film over it again

but not too cloudy to see the fish.

Talking of cloudy . . .  these white flowers are like a thick cloud completely covering the foliage on this low growing plant.

Autumn leaves (it's only the 1st September). 

Delicious colour combinations.

Tall soft grasses - some bleached now, others tinged pale pink.

For quite a while I've been wondering how to tell the difference between echinaceas and rudbeckias. I've discovered that they are both from the same family and can both be called cone flowers. "In fact, these two genera are so similar that botanists occasionally use their names interchangeably, referring to species of echinacea as rudbeckia and vice versa." Well no wonder I've been having difficulty.  So here are some coneflowers. Some have tall cone-like centres while others have flatter centres, even on the same plant.

I like the way the ends of the petals curl as the flower is coming to an end.

A large bee rummaging in a barely opened flower.

A tiny hover fly (there are loads of varieties and sizes of hover fly).

Standing back to see the lovely drifts of wide open flowers in the prairie beds.

Going in closer - more coneflowers. One, slightly to the left has a big dimple in the centre. 

I was thinking of walking along one of the paths but the plants are so big they overhang the paths in many places and I changed my mind when I saw the bees all over the flowers.

I was just looking at the tufty pink plants when I saw the gardener.

He was clearing a bit of a pathway 

He walked away with an arm full of plants.

Hoverfly.

Beautyberries beginning to turn purple. 

Cyclamens.

Many pine cones on the ground.

Beech nuts.

Spiders web threads among the acer leaves and seeds.

Frothy white flowers. 

I'm surprised these are still going strong. They seem to have been flowering for months.

White and purple.

Here I am studying flower middles again - yellow halos around green centres.

And a whole load of new cosmos flowers have opened.

Three types of yellow flowers. 

Large lemony coloured flowers top left, orangy yellow flowers along the bottom and big-middled-small-petaled flowers to the right.

Three bees on this one - all jostling for the best position

getting closer

and almost clambering on top of each other to get the best bits.

Big bee - 

about to take off.

Woops - another lovely pink cosmos centre.

The gardener was mowing. He works so hard.

Delicate slender fuchsias 

Berries

I only saw the berries in the photo above because these two clematis flowers caught my eye - the berries were above them.

Coneflowers

Bright yellow flowers

This bee is covered in pollen

Bee coming in to land on  a sunflower. 

Remains of the euphorbia flowers - getting paler and paler and looking like tumbleweed.

Big blousy fuchsias.

The gardener walked behind me as I was photographing these. We had a chat about fuchsias. He told me that there are hundreds of varieties of fuchsia.

This plant is such a deep velvety purple - I like it against the pink flowers in the background.

Hops 

they look as if they are dripping from the arch.

Plump rose hips like little tomatoes peeping above the wall.

Last look at the pond through the bulrushes.

Thank you very much for joining me.