Autumn colours

My ladybird is still here!  That’s a whole week now that she’s been putting in her evening appearance.   She scuttles all over my laptop, up and down the screen, over the keyboard, along the top of the lid….  She’s quite amusing, as she’s not too good with the flying thing!  She doesn’t appear to like the keyboard too much and often opens her wing case, extends her little wings and jumps over a couple of keys!  What’s more, she jumps backwards!   It’s quite extraordinary!  No, the flying thing is not one of her better qualities!  I actually managed to get some photos of her tonight, some clearer than others, as she took her evening constitutional!  If you click the pic you’ll see her pretty clearly!  The rest aren’t so clear.

 

Here ,she’s on the screen, and just to prove it’s today, look out for the photo with the grasses in it later on!

One more then!  She’s scuttling along the top of the lid in this one!

I quite look forward to seeing her, always hoping she will come back.   Actually I’m a wee bit concerned about her right now.  As I said, her flying skills aren’t up to much, and neither is her ability to walk up things vertical.  She keeps falling off!  Anyway, earlier on she did one of her backward fly-jumps and landed on the wall.  So far so good, but then she started climbing, and – you guessed it – she fell off, right down the side of the table I am working on and landed possibly in the shoe box under the table or the pile of papers it is sitting on top of.  I heard the landing, but couldn’t see her.  Well…. she hasn’t been back up to the top of the table since.  I hope she’s ok.

I just had to go looking for her, and have found her in the lid of the box.  She’s ok!  I thought she wasn’t at first, but she’s back on the keys here now, scuttling around as much as ever before!  Thank goodness!  ~OMG!  She’s taken another backwards fly-jump and must be on the floor in front of my feet!  I can’t see her now at all!   Crazy ladybird!  I’ll just have to wait now to see if she finds her way back.

Anyway, today the wind  was blowing a gale, and the autumn leaves were just flying past my window.  The trees will be bare before we know it, and I hadn’t any photos of the colours!  I took a couple of photos from my balcony of over the river, but I met Linda for lunch today at a tearoom not far from Peebles, and managed to take a few photos on the way there and on the way back.  I was greatly enthused about the colours in the trees, much to Linda’s amusement, as she thinks they aren’t that vivid or as colourful as the ones nearer Edinburgh.  Well, they’re further north than we are, so bound to be further on than us!!!!! What an excuse!  They’re less than 25 miles away!  Anyway, she has come to the conclusion that Ijust prefer less bright colours, and I was really thinking the colours round here WERE bright!  I’ll have to go up to Edinburgh and see the difference!  Anyway, here are a few of the photos I took today, and no, perhaps the colours don’t seem very bright, but then it was a dull day today.

My first picture was of my new wee rowan tree, planted in a pot and standing by the entrance to my garden – to keep the witches away!  It has grown a lot, being not even the height of the plastic tube that surrounds the trunk when I got it earlier this year.  I love its autumn red colour!

Just leaving Peebles on the road north, the trees were really colourful – right.

 

 

I love this farmhouse on the hillside a bit further on.  Not much autumn colour here but I took the picture anyway.

At Cottage Bank the trees alongside the old Edinburgh Road had already begun to lose all their leaves.  What remained were also very pretty.  Shame it was such a dreich day.

This is a view behind Cottage Bank, the hill called Brown Dod!  What a lovely name!  In Scots, a dod is a lump of something, and you could certainly say that the hill was a bit of  lump, brown or otherwise!  I love this view and probably have photos of it in all seasons!

After a nice lunch and a good blether with Linda, she went north, back to Edinburgh, and I south, back to Peebles, taking my time and looking out for potential photographic opportunities.  I had to pull into the car park at Eddleston village hall to take a picture of this stunning tree, and a bit further down the road ,in a lay-by, I took this scene. - below.

Instead of continuing on the main road to Peebles, I detoured on to the road known locally as the Crossings – the crossing being where the old railway line once crossed the road  at this point -below - 

 

and at a bend in the road parked up and took a photo in each of three directions…..

 

beyond the bend ,the road that continued back to town – left

 

the view looking across a field towards Venlaw Hll and  the outskirts of Peebles – right -  I can actually pinpoint where my old house is, in this photo! ….. and the beautiful farm cottage right on the bend itself -  below left.

   I don’t think I’d like that conifer tree so near to my house.

 

 

So, back in Peebles I parked alongside the Cuddy Burn and took a couple of photos of the burn itself, first looking upstream towards Venlaw Hill (recognise the grasses?)

then finally,downstream towards  Cuddy Bridge, and the shops at the Bridgend.  There’s a beautiful cafe  in the building on the left – a chocolate shop, serving all sorts of beautiful chocolatey cakes, and hot chocolate to die for, as well as teas and coffees.  I’ve been in there a few times since it opened earlier this year!!

So there we are!  I got my autumn photos before the wind blows all the colours away for another year.  Just a shame it wasn’t a brighter day.  I love autumn, but then I love spring too, with all the new fresh green colours!  Got to get through winter first!  It seems no time at all since last winter!  All that snow!  I hope we don’t get a repeat performance this year!

Talk again soon.