All Fingers and Thumbs

Oh the crispness in the air, the ripening of berries, the reddening of apples. Autumn is just around the corner and I am looking forward to the cooler days and cosy evenings. By the end of any season I am a little tired of the old one and ready to welcome all the special elements of the next. The transitional days between the seasons make me so particularly happy. The surprise of what you might get, the echoes of the season on the way out and the messengers of the one creeping in. The nostalgia, the gathering up of memories of what has passed and will never be again and then, ahead, excitement at what is around the next bend. The sense of here and now, balanced betwixt and between. Summer 2014 has been a a real summer and while I welcomed the blue skies, long days and being able to be outside so much I've also struggled health wise, and particularly with the energy to get things done, to get to work, to get home with any thought of doing anything and the heat has not made getti...

Sweet memories of a quiet, mellow, rich week lost in the Welsh Borders. Cuddling creatures, cooking in a fabulous kitchen, eating breakfasts pondside with the most phenomenal view.

Feeling very deep in summer here today. Soft and relaxed. In theory I am shining my house to look new pinnish so when we return from holidays it will wow me with its unexpected tidiness. Instead I am drifting and lolling and gleefully gathering evidence of the benefits of indolence. The bright pelargoniums planted last year have been telling me for months now that trying too hard is often destined to back fire. I managed to get around to replanting one of their companions to overwinter indoors, it of course rotted and died. Those I mercilessly left to that fate survived our very mild winter to flourish as the stars of my haphazard garden this season. Time in the chair has revealed a secret treasure I would undoubtedly have missed if I had been more endeavoursome. Tucked in the crook of two branches with about half a dozen twigs is a nesting collar dove. It looks impossibly vulnerable from my seat and yet its very slight nature is the perfect camouflage and it is all b...