Autumn in England

Hello. This is my first autumn in the UK for three years. The first thing I am surprised by is how quickly it becomes winter. It has been cold for a few weeks now. I keep checking the weather in Gifu and see the high 20s and daily sunshine. Winter is long in the UK. It is dark. Dark in the morning and dark by 6pm. But the leaves are beautiful. The colours are beautiful; yellows, reds, pinks. purples. I'm really impressed by them. 

It has been a bad year for autumn fruits. We have managed to make only 3 gallons of cider as there are hardly any apples around. It's very late in the year for cider making but we're happy to have made any at all. 

I've made a blackberry crumble from fruits foraged in the hedgerows and hope to make sloe gin after the first frost. 

We had a lovely lunch out with beautiful sparkly cupcakes. 

But the big news is that we now have a little dog in our family. A black lab called Sam.