Last of the summer wine?

A day of great beauty. Still. Bright - increasingly low - sun. And the whole place suffused with that sense of the ending of this late summer burst and the onset of real autumn and the first sniff of winter. Goldfinch were flocking on the field margin seedheads - thistle and ragwort. A solitary Wheatear was feeding hard on a new sown winter-barley field. Kestrels, a raven on the cliffs, herring gulls and wood pigeon. Bikers out for a last run down the A2/M2 roaring in the bay.

We had a last spontaneous BBQ. The Fandango tomatoes that have survived the blight and ripened off the bush were fantastic cooked.

I gathered a few Harbinger toms from the greenhouse with a couple of peppers and bay leaves from the tree.

The garden is full of Japanese anemone and cosmos that light up in the sun and are finally free of the battering east wind of the last week.