Does Winter cometh ...?

Well, if it does it's travelling very slowly! Since the last Post, well over a month ago now, we have had mainly sunny weather and very little rain. If the lack of rain continues it will be the third Winter of below average rainfall and this will be serious - there have already been water restrictions in many of the French Departments this year. Our neighbours have been saying how the dry conditions make the maize sowing difficult, as the ground is hard and the conditions dusty, not allowing the seed to settle uniformly; and the last grass crop of the year has not been growing well. In the garden it has not affected our established plants very much, as there has been heavy morning dew. But a look at our pond will show how little rain there has been:

The pipe the left-hand photo is an overflow pipe which carries the overflow water away further down the end of the garden, into the road drain. Usually, at this time of year, water is about halfway up the pipe - you can see that it is a long way away from that level, a good metre below it. It will take a lot of rainfall to bring up the level. On the right-hand photo the water level at the end of October is usually almost to the top of the brown vegetation. Luckily it is no problem for our carp population, as the depth at the centre of the pond is over 3 metres ... so, there's a long way to go. 
Certainly the lack of rain has not held back our Virginia Creeper and the Wisterias, quite the contrary:

So, some fairly substantial hair-cutting has been required - using a scaffolding tower and gradually working along the front of the house, a long job and not particularly comfortable if heights are a bit worrying (OK, I know its not the Matterhorn, but everything is relative):

It's interesting to see the variation of colour of the leaves - on the left-hand photo the right-hand side is north-east and is cooler, so the leaves start their Autumn change earlier and then the colour change gradually moves along the house, right to left! 
While we had the scaffolding tower available we've been doing some minor repairs - to the chimney that takes the output from the bread/pizza oven for example:

It has been the time to gather harvests of course - and in a day the view from the garden can change, as they cut the maize fields; and in the garden we have been doing things like cutting the wildflowers and picking the quinces (its been a very good season for quinces, we must have had about 30+ kilos from the one smallish tree - so, work to do producing some quince jelly and syrup:

As the warm weather continues there are contrasting scenes in the garden - the trees' leaves' colour changes are evident and they are starting to drop, but shrubs and flowers continue so that it still looks like summer .... on the right-hand photo below you'll see some salvia bushes that have been in flower since May: 

We've also noticed that our olives are ripening - only just about enough for a pizza, but at least it shows that 'Orson the Olive' is happy with his Spring transplanting from his giant pot!:

Autumn is the time to do some general tidying up in the garden, starting to take down garden furniture, the shade sails etc - and the swimming pool has to be prepared for Winter .... and as we were doing this we found our friend the marbled newt; so, we carefully picked her/him out of the water and took him to the pond, where (s)he sat on the edge for while just reflecting on things and then slid, with some considerable elegance, into the water:

And on returning to the swimming pool there we found another marbled newt - slightly smaller this one, but with the same beautiful marking and delicate, wonderfully engineered legs, feet and tail. So, same journey to the pond:

Well, we cannot 'leave' October without mentioning Halloween - in recent years it has got much bigger in France; ten years ago, certainly in more rural France, festivities around Halloween were pretty much limited to some beautifully decorated patisserie shop windows. But now it is the number two commercial festivity after Christmas. So, as ever, the supermarkets have moved in and sell all sorts of ready-made items. But here in the Commune of Lacapelle-Pinet (of which Le Bruel is part) they do things differently and we went to a Halloween party where everything was 'home-made'  and was beautifully and imaginatively done. So, at last we realised that the pumpkin/marrow glut is no such thing .... it is simply perfectly planned to align with Halloween - and so our small production line swung into action, supervised by someone who, well, just 'appeared' as if from no-where:

Mid-and-later Autumn in this area of France is a wonderful time to visit. Usually there are long periods of sunny weather, but with the temperature reduced from the levels of Summer - so, great for walking, cycling and generally travelling around and seeing the diversity of the countryside, as well as visiting the wine domains at vendange time. The roads are so quiet and you'll sometimes be able to feel that you have the place to your self!: