IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN.

At the moment we find ourselves in that transitional time when the weather doesn't seem to know what it is going to do. One day the sun shines brilliantly, the next it's wet, dull and thoroughly miserable. Temperatures up and down like a yo yo, the wind one day coming from the south with a milder wet touch the next from the north east, extremely cold and lazy, by lazy I mean it won't go round you it just wants to blow right through you.

A taste of things to  come

Some folk over here have already had snow but the nearest we have got has been some rain that is almost frozen, but not quite, a bit like a “slush puppy” drink neither one thing or another and cold with it. Another thing that goes through this transition period is our road which during the summer is usually a dust bowl, now it becomes a muddy track on which one slips and slides, in places where the surface becomes soft, deep ruts are formed by huge log lorry's which slow down for no one and can be quite intimidating if one comes up behind you, they wait for the first opportunity to swing out and hurtle past you. Soon though when the temperature drops the road will freeze solid and once more be firm to drive on. I must say though I still find it strange when driving with temperatures of -20c before the snow comes seeing a plume of dust in the rear view mirror where the surface of the road is freeze dried and dusty.

Red sky at night shepherds delight! who can tell

So who knows when the weather will make up it's mind, it is said here “when the swans fly away three days later the snow will come” but I guess like a lot of folk law sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. We must take whatever the Good Lord sends, it's still one thing we have no control over, but I am sure some politician some where is working on it!! But we won't go down that road.


                                                                

Trouble is a brewing

The other day I had a walk down to the little river that runs along the bottom of our garden, when we moved here to Upes Iela we had three large hornbeam trees growing on the river bank I guess they were about 60ft tall, sadly they have all died, still every cloud has a silver lining and the two latest victims will make someone some very good firewood. That's if I can  find someone to cut them down and take them away. I will need to get the correct paperwork sorted before anything can be done, but that is just a visit to the village office to sort it out.

Branches stripped bare by woodpeckers.

Anyway back to my wander down the garden I was amazed to find under the trees a lot of stripped bark all around the base of the dead trees, looking up into the branches I found at least one of the culprits, a black woodpecker, it was quite happy doing what woodpeckers do tapping away at the dead bark to find the small insects who thought they were safely hidden away for the winter. 

A mulch for our garden? Oh no it's bark stripped by
our Black woodpeckers

We regularly see three different kinds of woodpeckers here only one of which is found in the UK, the “Great spotted” they are regular visitors to our bird table,

A Great spotted woodpecker.

A Grey headed woodpecker

 then there is the “Grey Headed” which we see looking for ants in our lawn,or as you can see  this one on our electric pole.

The european Black woodpecker

 and now this autumn we have the “Black woodpecker” which is the largest in Europe with a wing span of about 30 inches, quite a large bird, no wonder there was such a mess under the trees. This year we have increased our bird accommodation with the addition of a sparrow terrace on the barn. This has been a great success and several birds have visited and are checking the place out with a view to occupying the new accommodation.  

Welcome to my "pied a terre"

"Neighbours everybody needs good neighbours"

Sometimes I am asked is there anything you would like to change if you could have you time over again, well I may have done some things differently but I wouldn't change anything. Though maybe just maybe I would have liked to be an ornithologist and watched birds all day long. But don't tell Valerie that.

I'll leave you this time with some pictures of our Autumn colours which this year have been wonderful.

PS and this is what we woke up to this morning, things can change over night!!

The first real snow of winter.