Autumn's palettes + Lacock Village

Think of autumn and what colours come to mind I wonder?  Reds, golds and oranges along with occasional bright blue skies perhaps?  Yet Autumn has another gentler more subtle palette which she uses to great effect too.

We went to Lacock (on which more later) yesterday and on the drive I noticed that Summer's flamboyant, exuberant colours had been replaced with softer hues.  No longer were the fields bright gold but now a subtler, more neutral shade where the stubble remains awaiting the plough and other fields which had already been ploughed now stood soft chocolatey brown.  Some fields of sweet corn still to be harvested were no longer green but a greyish beige shade.  The verdant bright greens of summer had faded to a duller, darker shade and along the roadsides there stood the bleached skeletons of cow parsley and faded grasses along with the pale browns of the many teasels with here and there a clump of wild Michaelmas daisies in soft pale mauve..  Even the sky was a lighter shade of blue yesterday with pale clouds here and there.

Once at Lacock we wandered round the gardens of the Abbey and it was these same soft subtle colours I noticed most.

 The mauves of the Michaelmas daisies...

  ....blending with the pink of the echinacea (I think that's what it was).

And this beautiful clump of pretty pink cyclamen beneath one of the trees.

Back home this morning I wandered round the garden and realised that it was the same here and although we do still have some cheerful orange marigolds and lots of nasturtiums bravely flowering in their many shades of yellow the main palette is again a pink/mauve one.  This hydrangea is the dark blue one we brought from France which has resolutely remained pink in spite of adding some special stuff (see how technical I am!)

 Another pink hydrangea  - this one was here when we moved in.

Pretty nerines replacing the bright orange montbretia on the path.

 The last remaining sweet peas are also in shades of pink, mauve and white.

Autumn paints in both the vivid shades we usually associate with the season and with these subtler colours so that it seems as if she can't quite decide to leave Summer brights behind just yet but that she is winding down from all that bohemian brashness to something perhaps more English and delicate.  I don't think I could live with the summer brights all the time any more than I could live with summer sunshine (what was that this year?!) all year round and believe that "to everything there is a season" and we are now ready for something cooler both in terms of temperature and of colour.

LACOCK

We had gone to Lacock to meet up with a couple of our Surrey friends and we enjoyed our day out and the weather was kind with only one very light, brief shower all day.  Lacock is a pretty village and has appeared in many films.  It is however a living place and not a film set and so naturally every photo was spoiled by the parked cars in the foreground and as it was obviously bin day by ugly great wheelie bins!  So if you want to see what the village is like you might be better to look it up on Google!  Or here.

Pity it was bin day!

We enjoyed lunch and a good catch up natter before going into the Fox Talbot museum .  My friend and I enjoyed the exhibition called Theatre of Insects on the mezzanine floor whilst Mr M and my friend's husband examined all the old photography bits and pieces.  For more of Jo Whaley's work click here.

 And from there to the Abbey.

Loved this oddly asymetrical shaped archway!

I didn't like the atmosphere inside the house for some reason and couldn't wait to get back outside. I later discovered that a young girl had been sent to the Nunnery and had hated the life and tried to escape - she had been brought back and incarcerated in a cold damp cell where she died.  I am not into the paranormal or anything like that but I do wonder....?!  The last time I felt anything like that was many years ago when I first visited the Devils' Punchbowl near Hindhead in Surrey and later discovered it was Gibbet Hill where people had been hung in days gone by. 

Ghosts or whatever notwithstanding we enjoyed our day out!