Autumn - indoors

A real blip of desperation - or the remnants of a bit of gardening this afternoon? Both, I suppose. It was in a way desperation that drove me out into the damp garden this afternoon - in the first rain we've seen since coming home from Italy - to cut back the growth that has stopped us walking down the path for the past couple of months, that has soaked us and tripped us up and jagged us in the eye if we were rash enough to attempt to do any such thing.

But when I looked at some of the leaves and branches I was sweeping up afterwards, the colour of this bit caught my eye. It's a bit of weigela, looking more gorgeous in autumn than it ever does in bloom. So now it's sitting in my hall, in a rather nice old pottery jug that belonged to my mother, on a stand that until recently was occupied by an ivy plant.

I killed the ivy with neglect ...