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Autumn and corduroy colours
24 November 2014
Like unclogging bristle brushes under the tap, a 12 hour deluge flushes the last leaves from the trees. They join a golden tide coursing through the roads and gardens of Tulse Hill. Bulb planting is an unpopular option for the moment and I escape to Emily Carr`s rhythmical brush strokes of the Canadian forest at The Dulwich Picture Gallery. I also visit RIBA and Edwin Smith`s black and white photographs of the beauty in ordinary subjects: a bench overtaken by a nettles or the graphic ridges and furrows of a Norfolk field .
Autumn fashion: the corduroy trousers of childhood with elastic waistbands, and, later on earnest student males in sagging corduroy jackets turned
me off the material for years. I now appreciate its comfortable sensible qualities and find it amusing that my new cords for
autumn are `sexy boyfriend` ones. If only.
Like dividing a bag of of pic n mix sweets I sort the tulip and allium bulbs, from Unwins , Rose Cottage Plants and de Jager into 16 piles for the 16 beds in the garden.
More autumn garden things: stray rose blooms; dried spikes of nut brown cardoons; busy robins and blackbirds stabbing at worms, and the country in the city earth rot smells of sopping grass and moulding leaves. .