An unseasonably warm November ...

It's been a funny old autumn with very little cold and frost. I know I shouldn't complain, and I'm not, but it still feels a bit strange not to have the big coats out of the closet and in active service. My brain tells me every morning to put on more clothes than I need to. Last Friday night I went out with my cousin Clare for dinner. She arrived ... wearing a blouse ... with no woolly cover-up. Admittedly they breed us tough over in Ireland, but even so, that's not proper going-out-for-the-night-in-November attire.

Still, looking on the bright side it means that these guys can still enjoy their daily bread al fresco. I'd hate to be a cow who had to spend all winter in a barn with a hundred other messy cows ...

  ... and the trees get to wear their leaves for rather longer than normal.

Armistice Day 2015

Thinking of the fallen ... 

Return of my furry nemesis ...

Last weekend I decided that it was time to dust off all my bird-feeding kit, get it all tanked up with birdie tucker and back in the trees. It's not been desperately cold or anything like that, but it just felt like it was time to get the winter-feeders back in action. And I have to admit that it's not an entirely altruistic activity: I get a huge kick out of seeing all the little critters who come to my back garden for dinner.

Angel wings and Christmas cakes ...

Mr B and Emi have been away wargaming this weekend. Whilst they've been busy commanding their Dacian troops against Trajan's Roman Legions the Wonder Dog and I have been keeping ourselves busy back at base.

In truth it's beginning to feel a bit like Christmas ... . I know, I know: shoot me now for mentioning the dreaded C-word so early in November! But, the thing is, if you're planning on making a Chrimbo cake you really need to get cracking now or it'll be too late to feed it the requisite amount of alcohol to achieve that perfect level of boozy, fruity unctuousness by the Big Day.

Yesterday I spent the morning baking my cakes. I used my old, tried and tested recipe, which you can find here: Boozy Bejewelled Christmas Cake. The house smelt divine with that wonderful fruity, buttery, spicy smell that comes from fruit cakes baking slowly in the oven. Yum!

The Green Man in autumn ... a tale of renewal and rebirth ...

The other day I was wandering through the beech wood close to my parents' house admiring the wonderful colour of the leaves when it struck me that the Green Man of our pre-Christian mythology would have felt just a little bit uncomfortable with all these seasonal changes. He always seems to be depicted in his full-summer garb with green leaves in their prime.

Perspective ...

“And those who were seen dancing, were thought to be crazy, by those who could not hear the music.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

The other day I was busy taking photographs of the world from the perspective of a daisy. A man walked by, and looked at me in that pitying, somewhat superior way people do when they think you’re a bit simple. I passed no remarks. I knew what I was about, and I didn’t need his affirmation.

This is what the chap, who thought he’d got an edge over the mad bird with the camera, missed. He didn’t see the dewdrops condensing on the blades of grass as the late autumn sun melted the fog off the lawn. Viewed from the perspective of the daisy it looked like a lush jungle dusted with diamonds. I wonder, if he’d paused to look, would he have heard the music?

All the best for now,

 Bonny x

A foggy day in London town ...

We've been having the most amazing autumn pea souper fogs. Travelling back from Belfast to London on Sunday night was a little bit hairy. Our flight was delayed by over an hour and a half, and we were lucky to make it out at all. I remember looking at the departures board and seeing that all the Gatwick flights had been cancelled. I thanked the travel gods that I'd opted for Luton: I'd got to get Emi back to London in time for school on Monday morning.

We were shepherded onto the plane as usual, but then they kept us sitting on the tarmac until they were able to get a clear landing slot at Luton. I'm a fairly compact person, vertically challenged some might say, and Emi's small for his age. But we had a giant of a man sitting beside us who was wedged uncomfortably into his space with knees and elbows protruding awkwardly into ours.

Favour Royal Forest Park, County Tyrone ... after the fog had lifted

Maxi's Christmas Jumper ...

Maxi, the Wonderdog, is scheduled for a haircut next week. Poor lamb: with the growing chill in the air he's not going to be totally delighted with that development. But to lessen the impact of his shorn locks I've knit him a jumper.

If you'd like to make one it's pretty easy: just read on for my pattern:

Still blooming through Halloween ...

We've come to stay with my parents in South Tyrone. My mum's a Halloween baby, and we're helping her celebrate with a birthday weekend to wrap up Emi's half term holidays. One of the many amazing things to impress us over here in Ireland is how her garden is blooming late into the autumn.

I am deeply envious. I garden on not-very-wonderful London clay, where I have to work really, really hard to get the good things to flourish. The weeds seem to do just fine for some unfathomable reason, but I struggle to produce all the wonderful colours that seem to appear almost effortlessly over here.

The Gothic Temple at Stowe ...

As it's almost Halloween, and, as I'm getting into a really spooktastic vibe, I thought I'd share some photos of one of my favourite Gothic buildings, the Gothic Temple at Stowe. Isn't it a gem?

Gothic architecture and Halloween go together like Fred and Ginger or crackers and cheese in my book. And this little beauty from the 18th century looks like it was created as the backdrop to some blood-chilling tale.

The haunting of Corfe Castle ...

Have you ever visited a place, and come away with the view that it really ought to be haunted? Well, for me, Corfe Castle down in Dorset is just such a place. The splendid ruins of a once grand royal castle look like the perfect habitat for a legion of spooks from the other side of mortality. Now I'm not saying that I totally believe all of this stuff, but I do enjoy a good ghost story for entertainment's sake if nothing else.

Just feast your eyes on the romantic ruin, and I think you'll agree that it takes very little imagination to conjure up a host of ghostly goings on that might take place here.

Fungus fetish ...

It's been a good autumn for Fungi down here in the not-always-so-sunny South West of England.

Yesterday morning I spent a happy hour out in the garden taking macro shots of all the fungal goodness nestling in the grass. Now I'd be lying if I pretended to know the names of these beauties - or, even more importantly, whether I can eat them without poisoning myself. So it's probably just as well that my interaction with them remained one that was channelled exclusively through the lens of my camera ...

Halloween tombstones ...

As Halloween draws nearer I've been enjoying some macabre tomb carvings. The carving below used to adorn a grave in St. Lawrence's Churchyard, Exeter. Today it lives in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. It dates from the 1600s when such tomb ornaments were very much the vogue. They lived through some pretty tough times back then. There was the English Civil War (1642 - 1651), followed by the religious excesses of Cromwell's Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Black Death raised its deadly face in 1665 and, after the Restoration, there was considerable apprehension as to the direction in which the House of Stuart was leading the country. It was a time of intense religious debate and radical politics. And normal folk, convinced that they were living in the last days, and that the end of the world was nigh, took to the macabre to underline their own fragile mortality ... .

Like the sunshine after rain ... a spiritual journey

Isn't it wonderful when the sun finally appears after the rain? We've had a succession of  grey, wet days, down here in Devon. We've hunkered down and nested indoors, but yesterday afternoon the sun came out, and all of sudden autumn turned into something glorious again.

Only a day ago the field of stubble over the hill was a maze of maize. There's a ramblers' right of way that runs right through it, and it felt a little bit like hiking through a jungle. What a difference a day makes ... .

Forde Abbey, Dorset ...

Forde Abbey, Dorset

This is undoubtedly one of the prettiest houses in England. It's grand, but not in a draughty, haughty, pretentious way. No, on the contrary, this is a place with a cosy congeniality that invites you to linger longer. And the gardens ... well, don't get me started on the gardens unless you've got a good long time to listen whilst I tell you how much I liked them ... .

I often find with historic houses that there's one strand, one story-line from their past that speaks more loudly and more eloquently than the others. Now in the case of Forde Abbey there are many to choose from. This is, after all, a property that's got 8 centuries of history to boast about. But for me, the defining tale is that of Edmund Prideaux, who lived here once upon a time in the 17th century.

Dahlias ... the stars of the autumn garden ...

I've fallen seriously in love with the dahlia. Sadly I don't have any growing in my own garden, but I'm beginning to feel very envious of all the other folk who do.

The other day, down at Forde Abbey in Dorset, I was very taken with all the colour and cheer that they brought to the perennial borders in the drizzle of a grey afternoon. It was a dreary day that had little to recommend it (other than the splendid company of the good friends with whom we were passing the time) but through all that dismal weather the dahlia stole the show and shone its colour through the gloom.

Beech hut ... Dorset style ...

And, nope, I haven't forgotten how to spell beach!

This beech hut is so named, not because of any close proximity to a beach, but because it's made of beech saplings, cleverly pleached and grown together to make the funkiest garden house I've ever seen. Apparently it was planted back in the 1930's.

Autumn's bounty ...

There's a lot to be said for starting your day with a stroll before breakfast. Here in Devon the farmers are ploughing the fields to plant their winter crops and the rich red earth looks as though it were chosen from a palette of perfect autumn tones to blend with the leaves.

And the very best bit of all this early morning shenanigans is picking an apple, fresh and crisp, straight from the tree. No other apple tastes anything like so good as one that's just been picked.

An autumn afternoon stroll ...

There are few things in life that can compare with an autumn stroll in the countryside in that magical hour just before sunset. Yesterday I set off in the late afternoon as the sun was dropping low in the sky and throwing long shadows over the grass. For me it's an unusual thing to go for a stroll on my own. Normally I have Emi in tow and the Wonderdog at my heels, but Emi was busy doing his history project, and the Wonderdog was busy having an afternoon snooze along the back of the sofa. He was stretched out with his paws in the air, snoring gently as though he hadn't a care, and it didn't seem fair to disturb him.

So I set off on my own with only the birds for company.  And right now we have some very fine birds running around under the trees.

Somerset's Bookbarn

School's out for the half-term hols and we've blown town for a week in the country. En route we visited some friends in Bath, and on our way back to the M5 stopped off at the Bookbarn International, one of England's largest second-hand bookshops.

Doggy Bandana ...

And here we have the Wonderdog modelling this season's must-have fashion accessory: the Argyll doggy bandana ... the last word woof in canine cool ...

He's watching me with rapt attention because I've got a doggy biscuit balanced on top of my camera, and he's absolutely determined that next door's pesky cat, who's always lurking on the other side of the garden wall, isn't going to get her paws on it any time soon.

The Wonderdog is a miniature schnauzer, but this size of bandana would work for any small dog of similar proportions.

It's been knit with double knitting wool on 4 mm needles, which gave me a tension of 17 stitches x 27 rows on a 10 cm x 10 cm/ 4" x 4" square, and it can be made with scraps of wool from your stash.

Just read on for the pattern:

Chocolate week ...

I've only just realised that we're in the middle of  London Chocolate Week. Eeek! Why haven't I heard about this wonderful celebration before? It overlaps with the London Rumfest, billed as the World's biggest 3-day festival of rum, and the two are being paired in a chocolate and rum tasting event on Friday at the Chocolate Show in Olympia. The Chocolate Show is running from Friday 16th to Sunday 18th October, and features an impressive array of London's top chocolatiers. Top billing, however, has to go to the chocolate fashion show. Let's hope the spotlights on the cat walk won't melt the couture or things could get really messy ... .

Well it all sounds suitably bonkers, so I thought that I might as well join in. And, let's be honest, if there's chocolate involved I don't need much persuading. So I'm off to rustle up some of the very best Chocolate Brownies for the troops over here at Talk-a-Lot-Towers. You can find my recipe here: The best chocolate brownies - ever!