Sussex By The Sea

I've been gardening as much as I can over the last few days trying to get everything ready for the winter to come. Not that I'm under the illusion that this is the end of my efforts for the year, my garden is full of trees and once the leaves start to fall they'll all have to be gathered up and put into wire cages to rot down into leaf mould. There will still be stuff to cut back as well but at least the greater part of it will be done. The weather has been wonderful, warm and sunny - just perfect autumn gardening days but there's no telling what is waiting up ahead and I've been caught by wet, windy autumns before - then the following spring all my little bulbs and plants are struggling up through piles of debris and dead stems. Some of the plants will be left anyway - teasels, fennel, sedums,echinops and similar seedheads will be left for the birds - I have great hopes of getting goldfinches on the teasels. The photograph is of my rosa rugosa alba, the hips are fantastic this year, huge and glossy like enormous red jewels in the sunlight. The picture doesn't do them justice.

I shan't be around for a few days as I'm off to Sussex in the morning and will be there until the weekend. I'm going to be doing a course at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum on the Tudor Bakehouse - we'll be making bread on the first day and pies and pastries on the second. The museum is a wonderful place - I've been there before on various courses and also to the Tree Dressing ceremony at Christmas and a couple of other events. Hopefully there'll be some nice photos to go with the story of my little adventure. Singleton is on the South Downs which is a very beautiful and historic part of England - just hope the weather is OK, we've had a pretty big storm here this evening and the forecast is for more of the same. Not a lot of fun when you're on a motorway!