The month started off well with a decent warm spell of weather and a river level that continued to slowly fall back towards summer level.
The bees were very active during this time, and it was good to get a spin of honey from the hive.
There seems to have been a lot more butterflies about this year too and they have been very busy around the buddleia and the Japanese knotweed the last couple of weeks! There is an autumnal feel to the days now with the heavy dew on the grass in the mornings and the geese flying overhead in large numbers.
The swallows and martins have all but gone now apart from the odd stragglers. The sloes have been picked for this year’s batch of sloe gin and there have been a few crates of apples picked and stored for using later into the winter for helping to feed the birds during the colder snaps.
The grass growth rate is starting to slow up a bit now, so cutting times are spreading out a bit more, and we have started to get round some of the big hedges again with what will hopefully be their final cut of the year too.
The weather final broke around the end of the third week and the heavens opened; there was a very quick rise in the river level which reached around the eleven feet mark above the summer level and there was plenty off wood and rubbish getting flushed down the system by all the extra water.
The river was up and down a bit over the next few days and the old bilge pump was kept busy pumping out the cobbles.
All the wet weather has not affected the beavers; they are still busy dropping trees all along the river banks!
There was a trip out in the boat earlier this month with Matt, the new Chief Ex of the Tay and Earn trust,
to let him see some of the river, a cold foggy start turned into quite a good day to be out on the water.
There was another spike in the river level late in the month as it cleared 11 feet on the rod beat gauge, but it was soon dropping back again and sitting around the 6 foot mark as September drew to a close.
Dago