The wheel turns

It felt a little like Autumn today, even though I haven't noticed that day in late July when there is the first tiny hint of the wheel turning, a sort of standing still day is how I would describe it.  Now as I look out across the garden, the apples are slowly ripening - enough to attract the wretched jackdaws with their colouring, and the windfalls have recently been stewed up, along with a few of the larger apples from the tree at the end of the driveway.  The rowanberries are colouring up and bowing the branches with their weight, and I have noticed the first blackberries.  Perhaps it is the recent rain which has brought this change with it - when it was still really hot and sunny in July, autumn seemed so far away.

I am picking the first gluts of garden produce - different sorts of French beans, the first Runner Beans, Firenze and an un-named spring onion above and eating the autumn fruiting raspberries as they ripen! The greenhouse cucumbers are still doing well and the first ripe tomatoes have been picked.

The beans have been trimmed, blanched, flash frozen and bagged up for the winter months.  So have the spring onions, for use in stir fries.  The cucumbers are being eaten as fast as they can ripen!

Yesterday we drove up to Leominster as there had been an antiques warehouse barn clearout highlighted in the trade gazette we picked up.  No real bargains for us, but we had a nice day out, looking around the other antique shops, and I had a delicious slice of Lemon Meringue Pie when we sat down for a cuppa.    We just bought a few things - printed wooden buttons, a book on getting in touch with your psychic self, 3 mahogany Regency chair legs (OH says he has something in mind for them!) and a couple of embroidered cushion covers which need a stitch or two.  I also paid more than I wanted to/it was worth for a bag of oddments of craft wool and several cards of very fine beige/fawn darning wool, which is what I really needed, to repair a geriatric Welsh shawl which has a few moth-holes.

On the way back we stopped at the junky antique shop and although I didn't find any more cards of darning wool, I did find some American craft magazines which had been sold through Borders bookshop when it was still open (and I miss it still).  One was Sew Somerset, and the other two Cloth Paper Scissors, all dealing with mixed media and creative sewing.  I need my brain stretched!  I looked on Fleabay to see if I could add to this small collection and found they were desirable and fetching good money.  One of the mags I had bought was £11.95 on there!

I had a definite feeling of Autumn yesterday, as we drove past the dried, sun-bleached grass of the verges, fallen leaves encouraged to drop early by last months' sun and lack of rain, fields which had been harvested and just stubble and large bale straw remaining and fields in anticipation of next year's harvests.  The beautiful Rosebay Willowherb of my header photo is romping up its pyramid of flowers and soon will be covered in cotton wool strands from its seed pods.  The creamy froth of the Meadowsweet is already over and the earlier Umbellifers brown seedheads.

The Swallows have been lining up on the telephone wires here - the last group of nestlings taking their flying lessons and then lining up to be fed - in strict order! - by their parents.  Soon they will be leaving us for Africa.

We have plans afoot - I will say no more now - but leave you on tenterhooks until September arrives . . . not to do with house-selling, sadly, but something positive all the same.