Flowers have their season but occasionally bloom earlier or later than you would expect. Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsis) generally flowers mid-summer but I saw this one going strong in late September.

 Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a widespread and tough as old boots grassland perennial (lawns too). It has a long flowering season over summer and into autumn; I saw plenty of it when I was in Dorset several weeks ago.
 Generally the flat flower-heads are a pure or creamy white but in the middle of a field near Cattistock I saw a swathe of Yarrow in shimmering shades of pink.

 The hedgerows were laden with ripe and ripening blackberries when I walked the lanes of Dorset a couple of weeks ago.

 I noticed they were attracting considerable numbers of Red Admiral butterflies. This intrigued me since all the brambles I saw were well passed flowering hence the abundance of fruit.

 On closer inspection I noticed this butterfly's long tongue eating (or perhaps licking?) the surface of the berry. Indeed it was so preoccupied by this activity that I was able to peer right up close and place my camera lens only a foot or so away. Ordinarily butterflies take flight as soon as you approach them- I wonder if they become somewhat intoxicated on the juice of blackberries??

 Tahoe wildflowers. Spreading Phlox (Phlox diffusa) is diminutive but prolific on sun baked gritty slopes. There are clumps of the purest white and clumps of the deepest pink but here and there they hybridise to create a delightful intermediate form. Is it white with a pink blush or pink with a white flush?

 My thoughts drifted to the wide open spaces of Tahoe more than once during a particularly tiring week at work. It was only a couple of months ago that I was there though it feels longer!

 In defence of slugs. Slugs get a bad press among gardeners, undeservedly so. They're only doing what comes naturally and have a vital role to play in ecosystems. Slugs eat weak plants -the diseased, decaying and dying- and regurgitate them back into the soil system. The recent rains have bought them out in force and they're doing great work in assisting the decomposition of plant materials that comes with autumn.
 The main reason gardeners lose plants to slugs is that the plants they buy are too tender to resist them. The horticultural trade breeds pampered plants grown in polytunnels which are then planted in beds of bare earth thereby attracting the attention of the many thousands of slugs that will be found in any garden. A typical response is to dose the plant and its surroundings with chemicals. I find it truly disturbing to see the aisles stacked with poison in garden centres and homeware stores.
 Woods, hedgerows, meadows and other natural environs have at least as many slugs as gardens- are they stripped bare by slugs? Wild plants are tougher by far and proliferate in greater density. Many such species that are also bred as garden plants are weaklings by comparison to their relatives in the wild.
 Furthermore nature provides a counterbalance- slugs may be predators of plants but in turn they are preyed upon. Bill Mollison (the founder of Permaculture) once said "You don't have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency."   

 Autumn is bulb planting time. These are a cultivar of American origins Erythronium 'Pagoda'. Erythroniums are commonly known as Dog's Tooth Violets (indeed the Latin name for the European species is Erythronrium dens-canis). Quite apt as the bulbs do bear a resemblance to the tooth of a canine.