Autumn is always a busy time at Les Trois Chenes, our farm house bed and breakfast in deepest rural France when all the fruit and vegetables in the orchards, hedgerows and garden ripen at the same time. It is also a busy time in the kitchen as we cook up our preserves, jams and chutneys for the winter and the holiday season next year.

The apple trees are covered in apples, the peach trees are bent double with the weight of the fruit, the asters and sedums are buzzing with bees and we are in the middle of harvesting honey. Autumn is here: 'The season of mellow fruitfulness'. (J Keats, 1875. 'Ode To Autumn')

It is important to try to achieve a balance in the garden. I enjoy growing flowers in the vegetable garden, having fruit trees with the poultry, feeding the geese on fallen cherries, plums and peaches in the orchards, (I like to imagine them ready-stuffed for Christmas), and love the gentle buz of bees visiting the flowers and making all that natural, local honey that is so much more fragrant and flavousome than some imported, commercial honey.

As a painter and landscape gardener, I love colour and form in the garden, and although this garden was largely inherited, at this time it really does look stunning. I adore the pale pink of the sedums contrasting with the cool, pale blue green of the lavander, the purple asters with the Golden Rod. It inspires me to get out my paints and start making colour notes and sketches for the winter season when I look forward to catching up on my painting.

And all these plants are tough little cookies. They withstand footballs, geese, the dog and other pests (I don't spray if I can possibly help it), as well as droughts and cold - all of which we have at one time or another here. Plants take care of themselves, and that is my kind of gardening!

Sedums are easy to grow and great for butterflies, bees and other insects. Our puppies and dog have flattened them a bit; they should have a lovely, compact, rounded form, but the main thing is they are tough enough to survive. All the autumn flowers help to make honey for the bees and seeds for the birds in winter.

The combination of poultry and fruit trees works well, and hens and geese in the orchards is an old tradition. The trees provide shelter and shade, the hens clean up worms and unwanted insects. These apples are late ripeners, but we usually start using them about now for cooking. The locals in Limousin have presses and collect the apples to make REAL apple juice and cider - absolutely gorgeou!! Must look out for a decent sized press.

It will soon be time to start making jams, jellies and chutneys, but right now, as we are still busy, I'll prepare them for the freezer, so I can toil over a hot stove when it gets chilly outside. The apples and marrows, though, I'll start dealing with now - so look out for recipes in future hubs.

There is a crisis in the bee-world. Bees are dying and we don't know why. One report suggested the cause was mobile phones. A couple of winters ago many beekeepers in France suffered losses, including us, but the colonies are rebuilding themselves and we hope for a good crop this year.

Fancy trying your hand at bee-keeping? Watch out for future HubPages from Les Trois Chenes. I'll try to follow my husband about and keep you updated about his bee hives.

There is a wealth of things to see and do in Limousin. Just ten minutes away is the pretty mediaeval town of Rochechouart, with a magnificent chateau and a church famous for its twisted steeple. The chateau is now a centre for modern art and regularly hosts shows of international importance. Every year the town holds an enormous 'vide grenier' or 'empty your attic', and there is also a fabulous Mediaeval week-end every year in August with feasts, jousing, dancing, singing and so much more. This year they had Llamas and wolves in the streets - caged, I hasten to add.

Chasse and Peche, hunting and fishing shop in the centre of Rochechouart is one of the larger town centre shops! People here are country folk and most grow their own vegetables, keep hens, and hunt the wild boar, game birds and deer that populate the miles of oak and chestnut forests. Fishing is also high on the agenda, and Limousin is a region of clean rivers and many lakes. Most of the country houses and farms have fish ponds that are kept well-stocked with a range of fish.