One last fling

I suppose I feel that Autumn really has arrived.

The leaves are turning a delicate shad of brown (or at least golden) and I feel that the mornings are becoming chilly as I reluctantly head through the gloom each morning to the bathroom. Despite what our enthusiastic weather forecasters tell us nightly on the tele – using words like “hot” and “warm tropical air” I feel that the warm summer weather which I love so much isn’t going to return.

The year undoubtedly is beginning to wane. Even so I thought I would pay one last visit to a garden here in Norfolk at East Ruston.

There is still colour to be found in this garden and lots of it. It’s creators specialise in putting on a good show even when most plants are beginning to hunker down. My wife tells me that it is the delicate contrasting of colours and the gentle merging of tones which is what gives the Old Vicarage garden at East Ruston a special attraction for her.

Sadly I am not so sensitive to contrasting and combining colours in this way. One of my arch critics once described my colour sensitivity as somewhat restricted to the colours one might detect on a chess board!

Accepting all of that, what I see in this garden are rich flamboyant colours – forget the pale shades – and wonderful textures. I have to get up really close to appreciate the textures and that is what I have attempted to do with this week’s pictures when I visited last week.

Of course the colours will fade from now on and even my eye can appreciate that some of the blooms are past their summer best, but the textures and the intricacies of leaves and petals remain.

Sharp eyed readers (Oh come on there must be at least one of you who has got this far in the narrative and is still awake) may detect that one photograph has had a little old fashioned assistance. It still works!

But not for everyone.

For the gardeners among you it looks as if the weather lords are on your side this coming weekend (forecasters are still smiling and not grimacing yet) so off you go and sort out the flowers in your garden that will bloom in the Spring! I’ll be back with the camera for them.