Leaving

With daylight at a premium, time to battle the elements to capture every fallen leaf for our precious garden mulch. Indoors, every fly that has cheekily squeezed through cracks into the cottage during their extended lifetime of October's late warm flush are now slowing to be a captor of our many resident spider population. Even the sudden reappearance of ladybirds are rotting to crumbs and brushed to the hen feeding pot. More mudding of cracks, more white-washing of walls as if we have only just moved in. But the place was beginning to look tired, and the therapeutic brushstrokes are a pleasant enough distraction from the sleet and downpours. 
And currently a bake-off between neighbours is giving us a satisfying reason to visit either. Apples were aplenty, and so now some lush and succulent slices of treats that need to be sampled. I know my pleasantries in the language and they know my sweet tooth.  

Poo dilemma

A pile of horse poo sits steaming near our front gate. It's been there a while with mushrooms accelerating in number on it's heap after all the moisture and barmy late Autumn sun. In fact it has grown to extend with two further smaller peaks which we are fearing over time will only increase too. The only way to save the scorched earth below the brown mess is a rapid transfer to the hungry garden plots. But the wheelbarrows are stuffed with an abundance of apples with no space left in the bulging cellar of fruit, potato and pumpkins. And until we consume more roasted/souped/curried vegetable and crumbled/steamed/juiced deserts the poo will stay still.