it’s october now

and I haven’t written a new post since the end of August. My excuse being that through September I was reviving my poetry practice with a 30 day challenge – a poem a day from very good prompts by the Irish poet Angela Carr …

It’s very easy to get out of the habit. Here are maple leaves on the grass at Ceres. it seems the trees are changing colour and dropping their leaves rather early. Maybe it’s the drought.

other signs of autumn have been missing. on September the 14th, walking at Tentsmuir, I faintly heard a flock of pink foot geese, but since then nothing. However today  I saw a few thousand on some stubble fields near the Eden estuary, where I have seen them roost in other years. I feared that avian flu had decimated them, but hopefully not.

I have asters in my garden this year – Michelmas daisies, the quintessential autumn flower. They look fantastic with the rudbeckias, and should go on flowering for weeks. My overcrowded flower beds follow the principal of not having any bare earth – nothing for weeds, or for shedding carbon. I hope all these lovely perennials  will carry on, self-seeding, and not need much more help.

most of the cone flowers are now cones of seed, but there are still some in flower.

rudbeckia prairie sun.

Last Sunday we went to Crieff in Perth and Kinross to walk along the river Earn from the whisky  distillery on the Turret burn.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and the river sparkled. B wanted to paddle.

Sweet chestnuts already turning

and a woolly caterpillar on the move

it was a walk through trees

though a few big exposed oaks sprawled across the path, I suppose the victims of Eunice last autumn.

most of them were already compromised though.

views of the Ochills

and safe passage to the side of, exercising caution, a herd of belted galloways.

the studio steadily accrues more work

finished or not

walks produce ideas

surprising colours

monsters rearing up

places that were once busy with the ring of hammer on chisel

old gardens

thought-places

and listening posts

in and out of gates

and beautiful dens

shelter

and enclosure

tides

and time.

Time to experiment

to finish

to start again