My favourite

I have now recovered sufficiently from my cold-of-doom to rise from my sofa-of-sickness where I spent Saturday and parts of Sunday languishing in a very Edwardian way and having my fevered brow tended to by my ever-attentive husband. I should have been draped in a frilly white nightgown and hazy penoir but instead I was wearing pink flowery pyjamas and the loving husband tucked me up with a spare duvet and went to play hockey; so near and yet so far.

Anyway, it was a gorgeously sunny weekend and as you can see, the leaves are starting to turn.

Thanks to a few autumnal blows we have a lot of leaves down already. In fact there is a substantial tide of yellowy-green washed up on our patio.


I know I should sweep it up but (a) it's pretty; (b) a whole load more leaves are going to fall before winter and it would be more economical to do one big sweep at the end; and, (c) it's much warmer and just as fun as the real sea to go paddling in:



And of course, if you're playing in the leaves, you might just find the prettiest ever leaf - it's rather like playing with pretty pebbles.



Clearly all these colours outside have been influencing my cooking:



Can you guess what it is?


Forget co-ordinating jelly beans to socks, now I can co-ordinate ingredients to leaves! The cooking in question appears to have been consumed before photography could be attempted but then you know what I made - it says so on the tin. I add 1tsp ground ginger and the zest of half a lemon for zing and rapidity of consumption speaks for itself.

Underneath all of the leaves there are still signs of summer, this is Lillian Annetts giving a final flourish:



And the delicate beauty of another fuchsia, Angela Dawn:



The most recent addition, and the most striking is this:


And I have no idea what it is. I think it came from a pack of mixed white summer bulbs but I can only go as far as "it isn't a gladioli" which was the only one in the mixture that I really recognised.

Close up it has these wonderful magenta sploshes that look as though two very tiny wheels have run through a purple puddle.



Does anyone know what it is?



I was down at ground level, and able to see into flowers, because I have been planting out the tulips for the early spring. They have wonderful names - Queen of the Night which is the same dark magenta as that flower centre; Shirley, a creamy yellow dipped in crushed raspberries; Purissima, a classic ivory; Flaming Parrott, a frilly tulip, butter-coloured with flame red splashes; Monsella, a golden yellow with red pencilled stocking lines up the back of each petal; and Carneval de Nice, a red and white humbug.

Hopefully at least some of them will come up in the new year to lighten the darkness.

And finally, H would like me to show you this:



He informs me that this is only the third or fourth time that he has EVER got a 180 at darts. We have taken several photos to prove this achievement to future generations.