The Garden in Autumn

It was sunny this afternoon so I broke off from gardening to photograph the autumnal scene. The autumn crocus are flowering well in the lawn with their lovely saffron anthers.
At last I have a few asteraceae of autumn merit. It is of course a compositae 'flower', by which we mean a composite set of many flowers. In the past mine have been plagued by mildew. These, believe it or not, are nearer to the specie asters and hence less liable to diseases.
The dying leaves of hosta.
Many of the geraniums are still in flower and are a joy.

The Sorbus Kashmiriana that Jude gave me as a 60th birthday present is now growing strongly if slowly. It flowers and fruits very well.

A lovely Japanese prunus near the canal.


Not quite the last rose of summer, but this Queen Elizabeth still flowers well.
The two Gold King hollies are now fruiting very well.
And I can't remember what this is called. I was going to throw it out for thuggery, but it looks rather good in the secret garden. Needs moving to the back of border by the garage, I think.

This series of photos is also an exercise because I'm trying to put into practice what I'm learning in Young's Mastering the Nikon D300. I've learnt about setting the brightness of the monitor scene at a lower level than I'd been doing. Formerly, I had thought my shot was over exposed, when in fact it was correct - check the histogram! I next need to understand all the wonderful focusing and exposure settings of my camera - and I've only had it for about three and a half years.