Inbetween the showers yesterday I popped along to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens to see how the gardens had changed since my visit in August.
Despite the dry summer there is a bumper harvest of apples and pears. The trees were laden with fruit
There were plenty of ripening medlar fruits too
The abundance of fruit reminded me of the first verse of one of my favourite poems - John Keats' "To Autumn".
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells........"
There were signs of the fast approaching autumn everywhere with leaves starting to change colour and many types of berry ripening.
There were plenty of plants still in flower and the hanging baskets and containers in the courtyard near the visitor centre were still looking beautiful.
The family of moorhens (not visible in this photo - wrong lens) were still on the pond.
And it was great to see two log piles in the Extra Gardens offering ideal habitat for small mammals and insects.
There were plenty of bumble bees on the sunflowers but it was that cloudy and overcast with quite a breeze that I wasn't surprised that there were no butterflies on the wing.
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