We have been outdoors on this lovely dry week, but haven’t ventured far from home. Just a trip to the local DIY shop and spending time in the garden. While the garden is full of plop plop plopping sounds of the acorns falling from the oak tree next door there are not too many other signs of to remind us that it is autumn. I reckon that the autumn colours may be very late this year. My garden is still very green. That is except for the virginia creeper, which creeps over rather invasively from next door. This time of year it comes into its own and its autumn colours are just beautiful.
Several years ago my son and I played a game matching shades of green from foliage in the garden to a green paint colour chart. Before autumn is done and dusted this year I was determined to try the same game with shades of autumn. So we picked up a couple of red paint colour charts including the very lovely Royal Mail Red (very topical!) to see what we could match.
The creeper has only just started to turn with mainly its tips and newer leaves moving away from being green. I fully expected us to find just one or two matches. However we managed, from just one plant, to get a pretty good match for all six colours on our swatch – pretty impressive. Isn’t mother nature amazing and autumn has only just started.
We just hand held our leaves and swatches will picking and matching in the garden. However if you are playing this game with younger children it may be easier to attach the swatches to a large piece of card and then use some double sided tape for placing the leaves next to the colours.
We were so inspired by our little game that we decided to have a go at our chilli plant. Not quite the range of shades, but fun to match nevertheless.
As the trees begin to turn in the parks and garden these colour charts may well be an essential accompaniment to all of our walks. We are off to Kew Gardens tomorrow and I have already packed them in my handbag.
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