• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Beautiful fall colour.

Keep em coming Scott, one a week of the same spot would be v interesting to see the progression. As you no doubt know we have Autumn in the uk but rarely do we get such bright colours.
 
It's still a bit early for the really rich colour to be out, but the trees are definitely starting to turn. The beech hedge behind our house (seen at the bottom of the photo below), however, seems to be still producing new leaves. Everything seems a bit confused this year really.

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We had a nice walk around Calke Abbey yesterday afternoon & whilst the trees were looking magnificent I was surprised how beautiful the Dahlias were still looking

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They aren’t flowers I’ve grown since I was a kid growing them with my dad but definitely one I’m going to try again.

They also had a lovely display of pumpkins, squashes, marrows & gourds.

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I like your view of the hill and valley. Do animals graze on the fields?
Yes, cows & sheep. There's also a fox den in the field & we often sit in the main bedroom & watch the cubs play. With buzzards nesting in the trees & regularly circling above the house it's quite idyllic for the edge of a town. It's the first house we ever bought but we've struggled to find anywhere else to match it, even at twice the price.

We've always said we'd never move anywhere without both hills & deciduous trees.
 
What I usually do with leaves is rake them onto a tarp and drag them into the forest. Is part of the forest behind your home yours? If not ask your neighbor if you can spread the leaves in the woods.
 
What I usually do with leaves is rake them onto a tarp and drag them into the forest. Is part of the forest behind your home yours? If not ask your neighbor if you can spread the leaves in the woods.
Thanks, yes that’s what I’ve done at the old house, both there are such a huge lot here, I may get a beefed up blower - and yes the forest behind will be absorbing them lol, It’s owned by a trust but never see anyone, it’s just abandoned, which suits me perfectly.
 
Can you use your lawnmower to pick them up Ian. If the ground and leaves are dry I raise the blade (rotary) above grass height which sucks the leaves up and chops them up which makes composting easier .
 
While some of you are nearly hibernating .............

We have had very little rain since winter ended.
A 10mm, and 2 x 5mm, so everything very dry.
Large cracks in the clay.
It was enough to fill up the rainwater tanks.

Yesterday built up for a typical highveld summer storm.
Large black clouds, wind and an impressive sound and light show.
We had 80mm rain in about 45 minutes.
Forecast very little or no rain for a couple of days.
 
While some of you are nearly hibernating .............

We have had very little rain since winter ended.
A 10mm, and 2 x 5mm, so everything very dry.
Large cracks in the clay.
It was enough to fill up the rainwater tanks.

Yesterday built up for a typical highveld summer storm.
Large black clouds, wind and an impressive sound and light show.
We had 80mm rain in about 45 minutes.
Forecast very little or no rain for a couple of days.
Wow, 80mm in 45 mins, did your water tank get filled?
 
Can you use your lawnmower to pick them up Ian. If the ground and leaves are dry I raise the blade (rotary) above grass height which sucks the leaves up and chops them up which makes composting easier .
Good idea, but we are too busy atm to do the grass and have a contract man do it, I shall enquire if he can do something similar.
 
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