Maybe I can feel that front moving in tonight, the rain pushing the air around. Although it is 20C at 9:00pm it feels grey and cool.
Some interesting plantings on my journey to and fro which I keep meaning to take pictures of but then I pass on by, soon the floral set pieces will be over.
Thornbury, a ‘wild’ strip planting near a junction with the A38 that started with Linaria maroccana and cornflower now a mass of scarlet and salmon poppies, a picture. But bit by bit the poppies are keeling over and flopping down. By the pottery an eclectic mix of big gold achillea, salmon gladioli, double helianthus and other things all mixed up, it shouldn’t work but in its exuberance does.
I used to despise later summer for its browned-out tired ways. But I even appreciate the uncut verge in Yate with the rich brown spent spires of dock thrusting through yellowing grass, punctuated by clots of stormy purple vetch.
Also the scent – what is that sweet scent in the air at Weston and Pucklechurch – a very late Lime? I can’t place it. And a most fabulous hay smell just after Tytherington, not the smell of cut grass but something very much more luxurious – woodruff/coumarin.
And maybe the Swifts have gone again, the wild fly pasts of last week appear to have ceased. And a time for Heron sightings, last week a gruff sustained graark as one was seen off by buzzards, and on Sunday 3 in formation did a fly over, the stiff-necked lead Heron graarking.
Who is pecking the Texas Dawn waterlily? Last year in its tub trug home the leaves were shredded. It has since been moved and the same thing is happening. The outdoor cam is shedding a little light on birdy comings and goings, but no real culprit has so far emerged. The cam did reveal the antics of a young pigeon and blackbird both just losing the last baby feathers miss their footing on the trug edge and have to flap across the water to dry land again, indignant but none the worse for wear.
Peacock butterflies seem to have come and gone fast, 2 weeks ago an abundance, last weekend none, just a scattering of Red Admirals, Gatekeepers and Commas plus the more robust whites in flight.