Dwindling ...

...the number of posts and the number of readers I suspect

and the harvest too

but it was a good year for French beans

and I will definitely grow them again.

Sissinghurst and Great Dixter continue to mellow beautifully

 and there is an exciting new place to visit,

Tillingham, a biodynamic vineyard, 

with rooms and a restaurant in the heart 

of the Sussex countryside.

There was a son in San Francisco

and another newly established in Tokyo.

This butterfly looks a little how I feel.

I'm never good with the shortening days

and this seems to have been a particularly swift descent into Autumn.

Pencil sharpening, new term feelings were not as marked as in previous years

but for this one

a fifth birthday

and an exciting first week at big school are under her belt.

For now, in these troubling times,

I seek solace in scenes like those above,

the writings of Gladys Taber, (thanks Nan)

and seek to adopt the Zen-like attitude

of this ram.

See you, I hope,

before we all fall over the cliff.

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.

Hold the front page

This Bank Holiday weekend delivered spring and early summer

all rolled into one glorious extravaganza.

The beach,

deserted and sandy for once, raked of its usual shingle layer.

Wisteria.

Rhododendrons.

Azaleas.

Other people's gardens,

open to the public under the National Garden Scheme.

Walks, with dodgy overgrown footpaths

and equally dodgy directions from an ancient guide book

but a bonus discovery

of an abandoned orchard, like a scene from The Secret Garden

with a mysterious gazebo in the middle of nowhere.

 Foliage colour to rival that of autumn

but with added zing and zest,

and finally, a rare treat, the handkerchief tree 

Davidia involucrata in flower

to wave us on our way home.

Sweetness

Three jars of sweet crab apple jelly.

Five jars of sweet quince jelly.

Four weeks worth of sweetness.