Cultivars of Mahonia x media flower late in the year. I saw these in the park up the road. I don't detect any particular fragrance off them but bumblebees will come out of hibernation when they get the scent. Despite the chill some big bumblers were coming and going and rummaging hungrily among the flowers.

 The flowers may fade but these Purple Toadflax (Linaria purpurea) are going out in a blaze of colour. In summer spikes of purple flowers top the tall green stems. In autumn the flowers go to seed but the stems turn to fiery shades of red as they wane into winter.  

 It's rather late in the year to be doing any planting but hardy plants that have been grown outdoors (rather than in polytunnels) generally tough it out. I bought these two Hellebore foetidus and a pot of Arum maculatum at a market last week so I'll pop them in the ground.
 It's chilly but we haven't had a frost yet in inner London. In effect the big city has an extended growing season being a microclimate that is generally several degrees warmer then the surrounding region. 

 Call it autumn or call it the fall, both terms evoke the shedding of leaves en masse by deciduous trees, shrubs and perennials. Leaf litter is a wonderful thing, nature's soil improver. I sweep leaves off the grass, paths and patio but straight onto the beds or gather them in a wire mesh bin to make leafmould.
 Gardeners sometimes go to a lot of effort removing organic matter in the form of "garden waste" and a lot of effort adding organic matter in the form of compost. A mature garden can feed itself -just as nature does- in a self-sustaining cycle.

 Tahoe wildflowers. Lupines are probably the most prolific of all the wildflowers I've seen on my hiking trips to California and Oregon, most recently in Lake Tahoe (above). North America has the best part of 200 Lupinus species growing in the wild; California alone has around 80 species.

 Autumn is the mushroom season. Mushrooms and fungus are sometimes used as interchangeable terms but to be accurate mushrooms are the fruiting body of the fungus.

 I went to my local Farmers' Market on Saturday. There is a fruit and veg stall from Kent that I particularly like. Their produce is a bit knobbly, a bit knarly, the skin may be a bit blemished. But it tastes so good.
 In fact it tastes like the fruit is off a tree and the veg has grown in the ground. And if it needs packaging a brown paper bag is provided.