Overwhelming

When I was a child, my favourite sweets were Pontefract Cakes  (and that's a fascinating link, by the way). I don't know quite how this came about, but I do know that I'd buy a box on Saturday with my 6d pocket money, so perhaps they went further than other similarly-priced confectionary. I have a distinct memory of what must have been a Sunday morning, when my parents didn't get up as early as on other days, lying on my side in bed in the Maid's Room off the kitchen, head propped up on my right hand, reading Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company and eating Pontefract Cakes, and that the way I liked to eat them was in little piles of, say, four or five, crammed into my mouth at once rather than singly. The affluent luxury of the moment was one to savour - and I'm glad I didn't know what I do now about the possibly harmful effects of too much liquorice! I must have been younger than ten, because we moved house when I was ten and this memory is in the top flat where I lived until then. 

And why am I talking about this? Because I was reminded of the sheer gluttony of my young self this afternoon by the superabundance of amazing colours in Benmore Gardens, where I took over 60 photos in the space of an hour with a child-like greed as if I'd lose something if I didn't photograph it. Having left Mr PB being sensible in the lower garden, I climbed the hill alone and therefore had no-one to disapprove of my stopping every second step, no conversation to break off for yet another photo shoot. 

I have never seen colours like this, never been so aware of a magnificent autumn. Some years summer just vanishes, leaving behind sad, brown leaves and only the berberis for a touch of flame; this year I've thought several times that it couldn't get any more spectacular and have been proved gloriously wrong. I'm blipping the pond area simply because so many trees are grouped round its black surface, only black in part just now as a carpet of round gold leaves covers half its area - you can see the beginning of this in the photo. I'll add a different view as an extra - think of it as me cramming one more sweetie in before I'm caught ...