summer fading to autumn

The days are definitely getting shorter and the mornings colder. The mellowing sun lower in the sky.


There is a cold damp morning mist clinging to Hamstead Heath, wrapped around the trees. The first falling golden leaves of autumn lay on the pavement outside my studio (which I pick up and photograph).
The allotment is looking healthy enough for this time of year, one of our late sown sunflowers lighting up the plot like an angle poise lamp.


There’s plenty of winter salad, taking advantage of the last warmth of the sun, they will soon need thinning and transplanting.
Despite the slowing of growth, there’s still life here. Party dress Dahlias on neighbouring plots, clear orange of calendula and nasturtium glow like bright embers in the ash.

I love this time of year, a calm moment of equilibrium, before the pendulum swings back toward the darkness of winter.

Howard Sooley
25 September 2014

bean soup

Cooked a bean soup on the plot. We hoping to roast the sweet corn (which we did anyway) but it hadn’t been a good corn year for us , as was last year and the one before… we don’t seem to be good at corn.

The day was still and warm and the allotments curiously unpopulated. Conkers plummeted from the trees, ricocheting like pistol fire from the branches as they fell.

The bees, aware of the spent embers of hollyhock, hurriedly made the most of the last splashes of late summer colour. We sowed (late) some winter leaf hoping the autumn would be kind to us.
The bean soup was delicious.

Howard Sooley
07 September 2014