Hello there. It’s nearly the beginning of a new month, and Autumn will soon be in full swing. September has been a pretty dry month here in central Scotland, unlike other parts of the UK. So dry in fact that the water butt is almost empty which is almost unheard of at this time of year. But no doubt Mother Nature will make up for it next month and you’ll be reading about it in my next garden post!

The day and night temperatures have lowered as the month has gone on. A few days ago, it was gloriously sunny and warm, and the sunflowers and rose opened up in response.

In the greenhouse, the Cobra French beans are still producing flowers and juicy green beans. Such a tasty treat.

And so to my tale. I was late planting runner beans this year and ended up leaving them in the greenhouse in large pots for quite some time. In mid August, the beans were failing to pollinate behind glass, I carefully moved them outside. After a few days of warm sunshine, regular watering and some feed, the beans started to form and began to develop very quickly. So pleased was I, I had a whole post planned on how to successfully grown runner beans late into the season.

Then, early one morning in the middle of this month………

……this is what I woke up to! And here’s the culprit. Now a frequent visitor, he/she has also taken a liking to Salal berries (amongst many other plants!). I’m not too bothered about the berries as they are very hardy, but, the beans, I could have cried!

After some hasty fleece wrapping, a few days on, the beans seem to be thriving again. The foliage and beans further up the stems were undamaged, and this is how they look this weekend; I may get to taste homegrown runner beans after all this year 🙂

Another garden visitor who does no damage, is this delightful Robin who has started singing his heart out most days in the holly tree. Not the greatest of photos, but his song is an absolute delight to hear, and it is so loud!

I’m ending my post this week with an image of a radiant September sunset I captured this week. No sooner had I taken this picture, than the colours faded and it became dark very quickly. It was a glorious sight for a few short minutes at the end of a busy day. Until next month, thanks for reading my post. Best wishes 🙂