The weather is a mixed bag just now with rain showers then sunshine but mostly it is a little chillier.  It is that time of year to give the garden a vine weevil treatment using nematodes so both the front and back gardens have been treated as well as the patio and conservatory.  I have potted up the crocuses, the early irises and the narcissi and put them all out on the patio.  The tulips can wait until November but I only have a few of them.  Amy scraped the weeds from the spaces between slabs on the patio and that makes a big difference to the appearance. I have been cutting back the most straggly looking perennials just to keep things a bit tidier.

There are still lots of flowers out:  Japanese anemones, persicaria, agastache, fuchsia, some grasses (the miscanthus and hakonechloa), a few weigela flowers, a few viburnum flowers, a few purple hellebore, verbena,  cyclamen and erigeron.  The roses have plenty flowers and buds still.  There are a few plants with  bright red berries  like the variegated holly, and the self seeded cotoneaster.

The oranges and reds in the acer shirasawanum are looking great just now along with their red keys.  The crab apples are also turning orange.  The stems of the dogwood are turning red and the rowan foliage is turning a lovely red colour too.

Acer palmatum dissectum ‘Garnet’ is still purple but it will soon be turning bright red. I love the way some of the viburnum leaves are tinged with the same purple colour as the acer leaves and the miscanthus flowers.

There is more dark purple in the heucheras and the borrowed landscape of my neighbours trees.  These dark purples are offset by the golden foliage of the heathers, some ferns,  and the hakonechloa grass, and the silver foliage of the snow in summer.

I inherited a pot with an azalea plant in it and this little plant has sprung up in the same pot.  I am not quite sure if it is a geranium lucida and if it will be a problem in the future but just now it looks good with it’s autumn colours.

Last month there were slugs in the birdfeeder but this time it is a snail is having a kip in the feeding hole.

This adult frog came to visit overnight in the conservatory – don’t actually know how long it had been in there.

And staying in the conservatory – the lithops flowers were completely eaten overnight by a small slug that got into the conservatory.  But this is what they did look like for a day or so.

Last month I watered the succulents but I must have given the Glottiphyllum a bit too much as a couple of leaves have split near the base as the cells burst.  It isn’t a disaster as the outer leaves will die off when the new leaves come up.  Rooky error though.  My Cheiridopsis is pushing up 2 new leaves and is looking good but the other lithops didn’t flower this year and don’t look like they will push up new leaves any time soon.

I was gifted another 2 succulents for my collection (from Hubby – thank you): a Sedum burrito and a Euphorbia trigon rubra.

Now is the time of year I have to watch and not over water everything.  The conservatory can still get very warm on a sunny day but the nights are cooler.