Acorns and ladybirds

I managed to get out into the garden on my own with my camera this week, the first time for ages.

Autumn is really beginning to arrive here. Many of the acorns on the oak tree have dropped & the "hats" are left hanging. The squirrels have been having a feast with them...






The leaves are starting to turn...



There are loads of ladybirds around, all sorts of combinations of markings (I found even more in the car park but didn't have my camera with me!)





The tomatoes are still ripening but I think I may need to find a recipe for green tomato chutney.



Elliot’s Oak

Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
With sounds of unintelligible speech,
Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;
With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
To me a language that no man can teach,
Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.
For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
Seated like Abraham at eventide
Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
His Bible in a language that hath died
And is forgotten, save by thee alone.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow