Thursday walk - 1st day of Autumn (Coombe Wood)

Another lovely sunny morning. Fish were basking at the surface of the water.

Cyclamens are popping up all over the place. At the bottom left of the clump you can see the neat way that they grow in tight spiraling springs before the buds open. 

Strawberry Tree flowers. 

Drifts of colour still going strong.

Splashes of sunlight spotlighting various plants. 

There's quite a contrast between the short wide yellowy grasses and the delicate floaty seeds.

Tall grasses with the sun shining through them. 

It looks as if people have been picking the lower Golden Rain tree pods. There are still quite a lot at the top.

Red grasses.

Amazing colours - specially with the sunlight shining through them.

Pink Michelmas daisies.

These are coming to an end but what glorious rich colours they're going through first.

The zebra grass had the sun shining through it so as well as the splashes of green and cream there were shadows as well.

 The remaining petals, sunlit against a lovely blue Autumn sky.

The curls on these are fabulous - some are turning orange-red.

Many of the berries have come off - helped by birds or people?

Some bees have pollen sacs or pollen baskets (I've just found out they are called corbicula - plural corbiculae) but other types of bees just collect the pollen on their hairy bodies. Many pollen sacs look bulbous and golden and shiny when they are full but the colour of the pollen does depend on which flowers they collect it from. Apparently they carry upwards of a million pollen grains in each sac or basket. This one seems to have collected lumpy creamy coloured grains.

One of the Korean pine cones is disintegrating. If an animal, bird (or person) knocks against them at this stage they just fall apart. There are some new red structures growing up the twig on the left. I must remember to check how they are developing on future visits.

Some incredibly neat spiders have been at work here. 

Overlapping webs shining in the sun. 

Callicarpa berries.

Cyclamens in the woods. 

Sunlight through heart shaped leaves - like little pieces of stained glass.

Vivid lime green leaves, some tips beginning to turn red. 

 The spiders working here were much more freestyle. 

Berries.

The tree surgeon still hasn't been. The leaves on the broken branch are shriveling up and have turned brown. It's very crunchy underfoot here with all the fallen beech nut shells on the ground. 

 More berries.

I think of pampas grass plumes as white or creamy but they are quite golden when new.

The gardener was cutting edges. 

Bees were out and about enjoying the warm sun and rich pickings of pollen.

Hover-fly on Cosmos (any excuse to photograph a cosmos flower!)

From the other side of the hedge the fallen beech branch is much more obvious now the leaves have turned brown. It's lying across the herbaceous border.

These should be spectacular when they open and let down their spindles later on - there are so many of them.

Michelmas daisies - looking closer at the incredible middles.

and the curled buds.

Pink tufty flowers. 

Very bright pink flowers on flimsy stems - such dramatic pops of colour. 

Top flower bed cleared ready for the next planting.  

On my last visit this was a forest of sunflowers, abutilons and the vine-like clambering plants with peachy flowers. It seems such a pity to dig things out before they have finished - and in the case of the vine like flowers. dig them out when they seemed to be at their peak - but the gardener knows what he is doing. He understands the seasons and when he needs to be digging and preparing and when he needs to be planting for the best displays later on.

Slim fuchsia flowers.

I expect to see bees on flowers . . .

. . . it's a little more unusual to see a tiny snail 

Back to the pond . . . 

. . . where the fish were still basking in the sunshine. 

Thank you very much for joining me.