leaf carpets

 This week the deciduous trees here shed their foliage, so I've been raking & composting, enjoying the crisp, clean air & welcome sunshine that defines autumn on this Mountain.
 
The simple beauty of leaf carpets has so impressed me this season... 

I thought you might appreciate my sharing some with you before I rake them all up!

 colours so rich yet subtle....

shapes so diverse yet harmonious....


A camera is a wonderful invention... I can explore these images in paint when the weather is too cold to work outside

From the window

Last week, I was admiring the coppery beauty that clothes the trees outside my window. I was preparing the garden ready for a winter snooze...

This is the same view exactly a week later! Still lovely, but now a near naked tree, viewed through mist, instead of sunshine... how quickly things can change....

Today, I sit within in a cloud, feeling that winter has really arrived... the seasons just don't fit neatly into 4 sets of 3 months here, but judging by what I saw on the news last night of English snow in May, perhaps even that is a thing of the past, falling away, like autumn leaves....

The future is obscured as in a mist, & the past clings like the leaves on this Maple, but soon, it will also be gone... making way for a new season of growth, with new experiences and challenges...
an old cliche, but one I understand well...

In Earth's South, may you be wrapped comfortably in winter's mist, to drift & dream of good things to come.... & may you be cloaked in summer's golden light to grow & manifest such wonders if you're in the North.

Back in the Autumn Garden

Greetings!

Almost a year since I last posted on this blog...the wheel of the year turns fast... once again it is glorious Autumn, & I am very pleased to be here.

See how Holly waits to get my attention as I gaze up to admire the golden light?

I flirted with another blog for a while... I even tried having a business selling fibre arts supplies.... but when I come back to myself, it is always the trees & the garden that hold my heart & health...

So, here are a few images of how the enchanted Misty Mountain garden presents itself today...

I sat under this huge spreading Copper Beech this afternoon with Mr Treadwell on my lap, soaking warm sunshine into my skin...the tree dipped its branches & brushed my upturned face ever so gently... leathery leaves like old weathered palms caressing my cheeks....

And here is the guardian of Weeping Birch, ever watchful, still hiding under a mantle of gold...

My vegetable garden is enjoying a bumper crop of silky green Italian parsley this year. It loves the coffee grounds I have been fortunate enough to glean over the past few months. In the background, are shoots of new Broad Beans. I planted a red flowering variety this year, just to see what they're like. Naturally, there are self-sown Marigolds everywhere, & plastic bottles I cut down to protect seedlings are long outgrown... I really must tidy up a bit!

So there you are... and here I am..... back again...

Oh! & here is Mr Treadwell! The finest assistant a Marigold could ever find........