Autumn on the River

I've been very quiet here recently - at first a week of baby-worshipping in London, and then laid low by a bug I picked up there.  I've watched a lot of very bad day-time TV from the sofa!  But the view from the window has been  better than the screen.  It's autumn here in Cumbria and the trees are beginning to turn on the river bank.

We missed the St Jude storm, luckily, but have had lots of rain and the river is running brown and high.

This taken minutes after the previous pic - but the sky had darkened and the sun vanished!

Can anyone tell me why this heron is behaving strangely on the river bank?

Despite the weather and the short days things are still managing to flourish outside in my wildly overgrown garden.  The Stanwell Perpetual rose is living up to its name -

And these winter aconites are a brilliant blue against the wall of the mill.

And how's this for a crop of mushrooms on an old tree stump next to the road?

I love autumn - the colours and the scents of woodsmoke and damp earth.  As a child I remember being taken to the chapel harvest festivals where the pulpit steps were piled high with mounds of apples and pears, tomatoes, leeks, pumpkins, beetroot, potatoes, and buckets of  flowers - mainly dahlias, chrysanthemums and sweet william. All of it home-grown and auctioned off for charity. We went home with bulging bags. The smell of the Bramley apples! It's not just my memory - home-grown really does smell different to the supermarket stuff.  Just thinking about it makes me feel hungry, so I'm obviously getting better!