Wonderful autumn arrives in the country

I love autumn!

• Cold crisp mornings - warming in the middle of the day then morphing back to chilly evenings.
• The glorious colours of the autumn leaves - who cares that they are everywhere, they make marvellous compost for the garden after giving us that visual feast.
• The kiwifruit harvest happens... you can almost hear the plants sighing in relief as the weight of the fruit goes.
• The weather gives an excuse for the winter shoes and boots to reappear from summer banishment - yes I am a bit of a shoe nut!
• Clothing can return to layers hiding a multitude of sins (well... lumps and bumps perhaps).
• And my two walnut trees give increasing amount of nuts as they grow bigger. They are the 'Wilson's Wonders' variety and can be cracked open without a nut cracker (just bare hands)...and the yellow bucket is larger than it looks in the photo... the last ones were collected about 4 days before.

The photo is the result of the collection early on Sunday morning  - before the pickers arrived to pick the kiwifruit. We ran the risk of their tractors and feet crushing what had dropped if we didn't do it at that time... not my anticipated start to Mothers Day!
It ended up being a great day... kiwifruit (gold) all picked and taken to the pack-house, and more walnuts collected for drying...