After a wet and quite gloomy October, November began with some lovely light and colour in the garden, between bouts of heavy rain and winds that continued to bring leaves off the trees.
Early November sees that brief period when many of these fallen leaves, combine with the marbled greens of Cyclamen leaves, which are now carpeting the earth in several places of the garden beneath deciduous shrubs and trees, to create marvellous displays. Before they fade to soggy browns. You just need a little sunlight to ignite these abscission driven tapestries. 
We always seem to notice more birds around the garden, as the leaves come off. This year we even had a hen pheasant exploring the terrace garden – a first I think. 
Often scuffling on the ground, looking for anything to eat. 
But on this occasion, a couple of Great tits were exploring around the window frames and wall plates for insects or spiders.
The 3rd and 4th of the month saw incessant rain, with 57, and then 59 mm falling, which left everywhere very wet, and the water table properly restored! 142.5 mm fell in the first 4 days of the month, so it’s well on the way to it making it a very high monthly total already. Grey skies predominated, even if an occasional weird pink glow perfused the scene at dusk, one day.
As the rain eased off, I could get down to check the stream, which had a little bit of stone rearrangement, but nothing too dramatic – an indication of how consistent the rainfall was, rather than very concentrated heavy downpours.
This heavy, consistent rain, combined with an oak mast year and littered acorns still carpeting the ground created a blocked land drain at the yard entrance. Fortunately we’ve worked hard to get the chevrons and central channel coping with such a situation. 
But leaf fall blockages can quickly spell havoc so I had to spend a couple of hours getting soaked and taking remedial action at the height of the downpour, working my way down the track.
A brief respite and some sunshine and light winds on the 6th, gave all the six honey bee colonies a chance to fly out and forage, with many bringing back lots of golden pollen (probably ivy), showing how brilliantly they can exploit short weather window opportunities, even so late in the year.
I even saw a bumblebee queen active, visiting some soggy Dahlia merckii flowers on the 7th.
This mild, wet, but not too windy weather continued every day for the first fortnight of the month, with out a single dry 24 hour period up to the 14th. Good for lifting and potting up snowdrops for next year’s garden openings, but making other outside work very tricky. 
The remaining autumn colour was quickly blown off trees and shrubs, taking the garden into its worst and brief period of inactivity.
Cutting back perennials continued in any dry interludes, to ensure we’ve finished the job before more bulb shoots emerge.
As well as continual leaf collection from yard, paths and green lane. All leaves are left where they fall in the garden.
Great to see Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ flowers being visited in a rare dry moment by several honey bees now that it has at last produced a reasonable number of flower racemes.
At least all the grey damp weather with no frosts created perfect conditions for lifting and potting up snowdrop cultivars for sale next spring.
Around the 16th, after named Storm Claudia had blown past (which was less dramatic locally than in Monmouthshire), the winds swung to the North and temperatures dropped, with 4 slight frosts in a row, dustings of snow/hail, and a shallow but lovely triangular ice vase in one of our blue bowls.
This clearing of skies coincided with some early dawn views of a lovely crescent moon, apparently at its furthest from Earth for many years, together with a close association with the double, binary star Spica. 
It won’t be that far away again until 2042, by which time it’s unlikely we’ll still be around – one way or another!
It was huge thrill to spot 7 woodcock flying in/over our upper wildflower/hay meadow for the first time since late February. Having completed their long migration back from eastern Europe/Kazakhstan.
We enjoyed a penultimate sunny day, and a few snowdrops already open, with the earliest daffodil flowerheads now above ground.
Several of our homegrown Malus fruit were still hanging onto their berries at the end of the month, adding welcome colour to the scene, and drawing in a willow tit, for one of my flukiest ever lovely bird portraits.
I now include my recorded weather data for the month, since I’ve been collecting such information, in these garden views pages. November 2025 ended as the wettest November I’ve recorded, and the second wettest months ever, after December 2015’s massive 534 mm total. Yet it was still fairly average in terms of numbers of dry days and sunshine and also had quite a few frosts, reflecting both a cooler spell in the middle of the month, together with several very heavy rainfall days. Following on from a wet October and the wettest ever September, autumn 2025 (click here for the Met Office summary) won’t be as fondly remembered as the summer of 2025! Mean reversion of annual rainfall totals, strikes again. 
The maximum/minimum readings are highlighted.
2014: 191.6mm rain, 11 dry days, 1 day of frost, PV – 115 KWH
2015: 353.5 mm rain, 2 dry days, PV – 73.43 KWH
2016: 81.7 mm rain,16 dry days, 2 hard frosts, PV – 129.49 KWH
2017: 212.6 mm rain, 3 dry days, No frosts, PV – 98.98 KWH
2018: 252.2 mm rain, 11 dry days, PV – 111.44 KWH
2019: 248.6 mm rain, 6 dry days (some snow), PV – 98.02 KWH
2020: 200.4 mm rain, 7 dry days, PV – 102.48 KWH
2021: 69.7mm rain, 10 dry days, PV – 103 KWH
2022: 294.5 mm rain, 4 dry days, PV – 84.12 KWH
2023: 227.9 mm rain, 4 dry days, 3 days frost to minus 7, PV – 102.84 KWH
2024: 209.81 mm, 12 dry days, 4 days frost to minus 4, PV – 81.78 KWH
2025: 379.5 mm, 6 dry days, 7 air/ground frost days to minus 5C, PV – 104.52 KWH