Butterfly House and Dahlia Gardens

On Friday we went out for lunch at Aylett Nurseries in St Albans with our son and daughter in law.  We were delighted to discover they had opened a small Butterfly House as since Butterfly World closed down a few years ago now there has been nothing like it near here.

It was fun spotting the different types of butterflies they had as well as the caterpillars

Big Owl Butterfly

Their caterpillars

Flambeau

I'm not sure which butterfly this is.  Although they had a 'Butterfly Spotter' chart, this one wasn't on it.  

More Flambeaus

The also had a wonderful Dahlia display as well as their Celebration Field and Dahlia Gardens which we really enjoyed wandering round.  We first discovered this last year so I think this will become a yearly event for us to visit these wonderful gardens.  The also have a 'Time for Tea' tent that serves delicious cakes with tea or coffee.

It was a lovely way to spend a few hours and a great way of re-charging ourselves ready to start work on the garage - clearing, sorting and tidying ready for moving one of the Cavy hutch blocks that had been used for storage into the Cavy Shed and thus clearing space for all the book boxes that are currently stacked up in the lounge.

October has arrived.

It really feels like Autumn is here now with the turning of the leaves and the shorter days.  It is rather a wild and damp day today with not a lot of light.  I'm glad I picked the last of the apples yesterday as I don't think they would have remained on the trees today.

I have started drawing and painting again after a break of about 20 months.  I am so very out of practice, I think I have forgotten how to!  To encourage me I have joined in with a group I have taken part in before, this time 'Every Day in October' and there is a theme for each day.

Today's theme was an owl.

Very rough!  This was copied from a photo I took in March of a Morepork on my Mum and Dad's property in New Zealand.

I hope I improve as I did better than this when I first started drawing and painting back in January 2014!

My first piece of art work - watercolour pencils, January 2014.

I have also joined in with a Photo a Day for the month of October.  This isn't difficult for me as I do take photos pretty much everyday but I am going to try and really think about what I want to take a photo of for each day.  Today I chose a dahlia - there are a few still bravely flowering in the garden, but probably not for much longer.

In the garden:

Our Maple tree is still looking very green

But if you look closely, up the top the leaves are starting to turn.

Whereas outside our property the Oak tree just down the road is losing leaves at an alarming rate and there is more brown that green left.

My front garden needs some work, I just need it to dry up a bit, it has been so wet lately.  Another of the brave dahlias still putting on a show.

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I'm having rather a slow day today.  I seem to have developed a pain in my lower back/left hip area.  I have had it before but it went, however it has flared up since my trip into London on Thursday.  Will I ever have a pain free day I wonder?

Celebration Garden & Dahlia Field

Today we discovered that one of our local garden centres had opened their wonderful Dahlia Field and Celebration Garden for their Autumn Festival.  We thoroughly enjoyed wandering through the garden (in between showers fortunately!).  It was really pretty.  An added bonus was enjoying a cup of tea and cake at the end, just as the showers came down again!  It was really good timing as this is only open from 9th to 17th September.  The rest is just photographs  - I hope you enjoy.

There were so many other interesting and pretty Dahlias I would have liked to photographed, but by the time we had finished our tea and cake, the wind had picked up and it was about to start pouring with rain again, so we quickly walked back to the car.

It was a very pleasant hour out though.