Autumn....
...from Peter.
Verna sends: "Cornus alba sibirius - our hedge": 
From Big Sis: "Sissinghurst, last weekend. The pictures were taken in low light conditions, as I didn't get there til late due to hold ups on the M25, but it was very atmospheric going round the gardens in the failing light. One photo is of the garden, the other of the herb garden, showing physalis (chinese lanterns) which are very colourful at this time of the year."
More from Verna, who's in Norway: "View from the top of the road, looking south."
And finally for now: "In an uncharacteristically spontaneous moment of do-it-nowness, here are photos of the conkers I can't resist collecting every day when I take the dog for a walk. All these are from one tree at the top of our drive, and have been collected since last week. Any suggestions as to what I can use them for this year, once they no longer look fabulously conkerish and beautiful, would be gratefully received. Val P"
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Oh! Big Sis! Your Sissinghurst photo made it and is lovely!
My Killegar photo nowhere to be seen but Eddie and the PM team may think I was showing off. If only they knew - the lovely house nestled in the woods is falling down around me. It is spectacularly beautiful but terribly remote and very much like going back 200 years in time. Brigadoon comes to mind.
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Val P, you should see the size of MY nuts and you can eat them! Actually you can if Erics posts the the pic!
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ValP: I quite agree, conkers are magic.
Thanks for your kind comment, Lady Sue. They weren't my best pictures, but I was having problems due to the failing light. Amazing how vivid the physallis is when your camera is telling you 'no!no!'
I think all the photos sent to Eddie are lovely.
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I collected so many conkers one year that I tried using them as an alternative to bark as a mulch around shrubs. The squirrels thought Christmas had come, stuck them in holes all over the garden, and whoever lives there now is probably surrounded by a horse chestnut forest.
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As a kid in Chiswick I used to collect loads. Much to the annoyance of my mum and dad, who 'found them all over the house' and 'nearly broke' their necks 'falling over them, this morning', every morning.
Until one year.
When there were SUCH words of encouragement.
'Conkers, boy? Good!' as I came home each day laden with full conker sack (an old bank cash bag)****.
I collected a kitchen cupboard full (the size of two coffins stacked one on the other).
'Dragons live forever'
but not so kids' interest in conkers.
So one day, around my birthday. in early November, I was not upset to find the cupboard bare.
If you check the 19 parks and open spaces in what was the Borough of Brentford and Chiswick in London, for conker trees today, you'll find a fair number exactly 53 years old.
They were all born of Chiswick trees, all collected, unknowingly by me, all planted out in the nursery garden at Chiswick House Grounds, and all in time dispersed about the open spaces in B.BandC.
My dad worked for the Parks Department there, you see.
So, my suggestion to ValP is to phone up the local council to see if they need some this year. Given the disease problems the trees apparently have, they might well be v. interested.
**** He called me 'boy' till the day he died. He never liked my first name. Felt my mum had saddled me with it whilst he was away winning the war (single-handed by all (his) accounts)
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pmLeader - my brother is engaged in very much the same activity - planting conkers in pots and giving them to friends and family, in the hope of preserving the species.
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Yes, pmL and Sid, I have a friend who is doing the same with acorns. I've been the lucky recipient of three oak seedlings, which I'll plant for the next generation.
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VapP, Well you need to keep the best one and season it for the world conker championships.
Do they have to use gauntlets now for playing conkers to protect the wrists?
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Health and Safety
conkers
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Very probably Stewart!
Last year I thought I'd had a wizard wheeze because I read somewhere that spiders hate conkers, so I placed little piles of them in corners all over the house. All this year I've found fabulously mouse-nibbled conkers in all the other places that I don't look very often (under sofas, behind bookcases etc etc). Another year we saved them til they'd dried then used them as kindling on the open fire - a tad explosive, more entertaining than the mouse gifts though.
Never thought of planting them, but I'll do that this year :-)
Actually, it's a fabulous year here for acorns, and I have to wrestle the dog to stop him from eating them. Guess I'd better free up another jacket pocket for those!
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Yes I realise it's very late now - and my Facebook friends will be surprised and shocked, however after spending too long gazing at Autumn pictures is it not an ide that we have a little vote and decide on the best submission.
For me, and surprisingly, after Eddie's long gone train blog! it's still however the very first picture. Eddie's 20 Oct 08, 12:05 PM submission from Windsor great park.
BigSis will be able to identify the tree.
The tree has virtually every hue radiating, and the framing is - well excellent.
Perhaps Eddie heeded the advice from the nice photo man he invited in when we did the Window on your world submissions back in November two years ago.
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We all know that they are called buckeyes.
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