Sudden Weather

Autumn is a time of change... from the beautiful calm, colourful weather... where skies are blue as can be, and leaves show the many hues of the rainbow, to the mottled greys that accompany a dull rainy day. Not that all rainy days are dull as such!
Take a look at the photos.
One day I have pictures galore of sunny skies (mainly because it was warm so I took myself outside), insects...
This chap was a rather large, charcoal grey thing. He was a good 1.5 inches long, if not longer. The kids were very taken with him and begged me to photograph him. He flew off not much later, much to the disappointment of DD (2).



But back to the pictures... sunny skies, insects, gumballs from the sweetgum tree (affectionately... or rather not so affectionately known as 'those sticker balls' around here, they are responsible for a large number of sweetgum saplings that spring up in March)


and the occasional flower... a slight harkening back to spring, when I saw these speedwells as the harbinger of the warmth to come. Now they are the last to go!
My son (7) discovered them, hidden amongst the foliage of our plant... beneath the rosebush.
These tiny beauties tend not to bloom in the summer at all, but in spring and autumn, they provide a welcome burst of blue colouring!
But again, I digress.
Back to the pictures... beautiful blue skies... large black bugs, autumnal seed pods and colourful flowers... followed by this.
Torrential rain, flooding, overflowing ditches, roads rutted and destroyed!
The garden is drenched, the soil virtually unworkable, and the grass in the paths seems to be the only thing that really likes it. Which is hard because it is the one thing that grows really fast where we don't want it!
The neighbours driveway directed the waters right at us... washing all their gravel into our ditch, which then overflowed and ran down the road beside us... and running off into the hollow at the bottom of our garden.
Between us and our next door neighbours, we

have a road full of gravel in our gardens!
But, like I said. That is the nature of autumn...
Now if only we could manage to go a week or so without rain... but wait... it starts again tomorrow.
3 days is not enough of a reprieve!