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The terrific heat of summer has gone now (thank goodness!), and you can start to feel a slight chill in the air in the early morning as autumn comes in. We often think this is one of the nicest times of year - as September wears into October, the days are still long and pleasantly warm, but the temperatures drop till it's perfect for walking if you're on holiday. Or, for the village people, for working in the gardens and the fields. Now is the time of the harvest.
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Sesame is grown for its seed, used for baking and for making tahine, sesame paste. Collecting it is a sticky job, because sesame exudes a gooey sap which is almost impossible to get off your hands, arms and clothes. |
| Harvesting involves uprooting each plant individually, and carrying them somewhere where they can be stacked to dry in the sun. This has to be a safe place where goats, sheep or dogs won't disturb it and knock the precious seed from the pods to be lost on the ground. |  |
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It's been a great year for grapes. Green ones are grown to eat, and to sell for making vinegar. |
| Most gardens have a pomegranate tree or two, whose fruit is harvested and will be stored for the winter. In the old days, people used to make a pomegranate vinegar, but the secret of its making seems to have been lost. | 
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These luscious black grapes will be picked and made into "pekmez", grape molasses, which people will either drink, or eat with yoghurt all through the winter. |
| Pasha, the barber at the Cevizdibi, concentrating hard on giving a shave and a haircut. |  |
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Even at harvest, there's still time for a game of cards at the cafe at the Cami Yani, the "other half" of Bezirgan from the Cevizdibi. |
| Friday is Holy Day, and most people will go to the mosque for the noon prayers. They'll wait outside in the shade till the Ezan calls them to prayer. | 
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Hopefully, when Grandad comes out of the mosque, he won't forget to buy some sweets at the village shop..... |
| As October comes in, the other big cash crop needs picked - the apples. You can tell it's a good crop by the way supports have had to be propped under the branches to save them breaking under the weight of fruit. | 
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Both red and green apples are grown for eating and for making into apple juice. Eating apples are packed into boxes, those for juice go into sacks ready for collection. |
We've never seen so many birds as we have this year - both in number of individuals and in different types of species, but there is other wildlife out there too.
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The Mountains in Autumn - Birds and Wildlife and Wild Flowers
A red squirrel sits atop one of the great broken rocks which crashed down off the mountain during an earthquake some eighty years ago.
Lying now at the north end of the village, you can imagine the damage these huge rocks could have caused as they thundered down the mountainside. Some of the oldest inhabitants of the village can remember the immense crashing and the dust cloud raised.
You can hear the intermittent loud drilling as the woodpecker seeks out insects under the bark of the almond trees.
Though they may look alarming, hornets are a garden's friend - they will eat lots of the pests which would otherwise munch the vegetables. And we're told that they never attack or sting unless they're threatened.
This Little Owl is a young one, one of this year's chicks. He's flown the nest, and we think he's marking himself out a territory around the guesthouse. Here, he's perched on a fig tree.
The Garden in Autumn - Herbs & Flowers & Wildlife
We've been trying to plant as many species as possible which attract wildlife. This is bronze fennel, a tall, highly aromatic plant which adds height in the borders. It's seeding just now, and is proving a magnet for willow warblers feeding on the insects and spiders which make it home. This is a juvenile willow warbler.
In the very early morning, rock nuthatches gather on the roofs of the houses and sing their clear sweet song.
The rock nuthatch builds these astonishing, almost spherical, mud nests with a tunnel for entrance. They can be found built against rocks or boulders, and, as in this picture, on house walls by the chimney.
And the bee-eaters are back! They pass through again briefly this month on their migration back to Africa for the winter. You can hear their liquid warblng cry as the flock flies overhead.
Sunflowers are another variety well worth growing for the birds they attract. Goldfinches particularly enjoy a good feast of sunflower seeds - this is another young bird, one of this year's babies.
Yet another of nature's pest exterminators - a Common Toad, but this must be quite the biggest one we've ever seen here; he's fully 12 cm long. At night, he's taken to wandering round the terraces, looking for food. Since one of his favourite foods is slugs, we're delighted to welcome him!
And that's a taste of September in the Turkish mountains -
Come and visit, see it for yourself!
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