What can I tell you?

I have been blogging lite.

Coupled with the struggle my ageing computer has 

to upload photos to the blog,

and the amount of time I have spent away from the computer indoors,

Instagram has been all too seductive.

But September is nearly over

and as it has been so splendidly abundant

Instagram cannot satisfy the need for a splurge,

so here it comes.

An arresting sight on the beach.

Fruit picking at Maynard's Fruit Farm on its last open day.

(Premature I felt - the trees were groaning.)

A pebble beach can seem a tad dull until

you have time to look at each stone more carefully.

The colour range in the shingle at my feet was astounding.

The last of the Open Gardens on a rare wet day,

but the colours sang out and the crowds were absent.

Sad for the charities but in some ways kinder to the borders.

We went to an Open Garden at Perch Hill (Sarah Raven's Cutting garden).

It was magnificent but the crowds...

there must be so much colateral damage.

I don't know how I managed to give the impression that

we were the only people there!

On the other hand a late afternoon at Wakehurst Place

was very peaceful.

This little chap is also a very peaceful sort.

He smiles and gurgles and puts up with

his sister's tender ministrations.

He is growing apace and my knitting barely keeps up.

And now I must find my passport.

There is a big chap to visit soon.

Summer's end

In a way it wasn't such a great hardship 

to have scaffolding up in summer

because I always forget that the light doesn't penetrate

until autumn.

This is possibly Great Dixter's finest hour.

Zinnias are giving dahlias a run for their money this year.

Someone had her fourth birthday.

All things unicorn and rainbow

were the order of the day.

Windfalls

 In other news, I knitted a bunny for grandson 

as a companion for the elephant I knitted granddaughter

using another one of Julie Williams' wonderful patterns.

I cheated with the jumper as I had some self-striping wool 

left over and it meant fewer ends to sew in.

The garden is getting tangled and unmanageable.

So naturally I turned my attention to something tangled that I could sort out -

the ribbon drawer.

This is kept in a small chest of drawers that used to house

 my father's wireless-making equipment.

Top drawer buttons,

second drawer spools of thread,

third drawer tape measures, needles, pins, fixings and scissors,

fourth drawer, ribbons.

As a child there was a ribbon drawer for my hair.

I loved choosing a ribbon for the day.

They didn't stay in my hair for long though.

Now I come to think of it, there was a handkerchief drawer too.

Does anyone still give a child a clean hanky each day?

We had a pocket in our school knickers for them.

How bizarre!

A colourful hanky was a vital accessory for the ferryman game.

You chanted in a line opposite one child,

Ferry me across the river,

do boatman do.

For I've a penny in my purse and my eyes are blue.

(They aren't but that didn't seem to matter.)

Then the boatman would say. 

I'll ferry you across the river if you can show me something with the colour ...

and then you had to produce said item.

If you couldn't and with a brown school uniform it was a challenge

for the unprepared,

you had to race across the invisible river without being caught.

Miniature autumn tints in the bonsai walk at Wisley.

Giant pale pumpkin looking like 

a giant something else in the vegetable garden.

Windfall apples in the orchard at Wisley.

Too tempting not to try several of them and lament 

the paucity of choice in our supermarkets and greengrocers.

They all tasted so different.

When I say all, I mean a few.

I so wished I could pick these for crab apple jelly.

I seem to have been waylaid by Instagram. I thought it would never happen.

You might like to pick up some windfalls over there from time to time.