MICE, MUCK AND A MICHAELMAS DAISY

Came home, the big pots by the door with tulips and yellow winter pansies on top had a hole in the compost - mice! What a place to chose. I wonder if they eat tulip bulbs? So off to my wife's cast off iPad and sure enough they do. I have put a layer of pebbles on the surface and perhaps that will put them off?
More woodmice up in the wood at night, 

and then a big one!

Actually it is a rat! Cheers R up immensely!

Last month I was asked what mature manure looks like so -

however once it has been spread on a bed and raked it does look somewhat better.

Just found half a dozen apples I had missed, late treat.

R had ordered some physalis (Chinese lanterns) and a campanula plus free dahlia - Bishop of Llandaff (the red one). Now I will have to think where to put them.

The willows are pruned and several branches made into cuttings for P and his pond (more like a small lake). The bonfire grows - and will in all probability never burn it is so wet. There are areas of the garden I have not been in for a month it is so sodden. All I can do is hope, no mowing possible, and in places moss is infiltrating the grass.
I have had a modicum of fun with the electric blower - sending leaves off the paths then realising I wanted to collect them and make leaf mould.

To the story of the wet postman and the Michaelmas Daisy by the way to the front door. It is rampant and a couple of metres high (two and a bit yards for my generation). I put in two stakes and tried to heave it up but it still flops.

R and I have begun the great autumn clear up, she assassinating the hostas which have turned yellow and I have removed some of the cardoon stems that have fallen over. One is nine feet tall (nearly three metres 😊).

There are two plants that seem to go on flowering week after week. On the right a mallow given to me some years ago by my sister which self seeds and on the left Erysimum Bowles Mauve. The latter has flowered all summer and only needs little dead heading now and again.

So Ophelia has blasted past giving us a blustery time but mostly missed us, worst problem is the number of ash twigs littering the place.

It got very Dark as the storm approached. more like January than October - this is the living room window in the middle of the day.
One cause was said to be due to Saharan dust blowing north but it might also be related to the terrible fires in Portugal.

All the rain has made the bird feeders be clogged with wet gooey seed so I have cleaned them out etc.
Picking up sticks, pruned hydrangeas etc etc.
I had this idea and took the rotten peanuts up the garden, scattered them and then put the video camera nearby.
Then I went back after 48 hours, had a chat with one of the cock pheasants who seems totally unafraid of me (R says thick in the head), pruned a rhododendron and brought in the camera. I had 211 videos off grey squirrels!

So, sitting by my window going through them I had a menagerie outside, usual small birds, pheasants sitting on the shed roof, greater spotted woodpeckers and finally I looked up and there was a squirrel sitting on the window ledge three feet away peering in at me!
Time to get the trap out again?

And finally - my lantern is so tired waiting for Halloween it will need a new set of teeth.