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.

New Year blues

Our grand daughter was thrilled to be opening presents.

Anyone's presents.

The more the merrier.

The contents? Well they were not really the point of the exercise.

It was the moment of mystery that held her in thrall.

I received many lovely gifts too,

but the sighting of this blue glass gem on a beach that normally

only yields white and green was absurdly thrilling.

I felt as though I had won the lottery.

And yet and yet.

The glass once dry and cached with all the hundreds of other pieces indoors,

has lost some of its lustre. 

The magical feeling of acquisition has faded.

Where does this pull towards possession come from?

It seems to start so early.

And the longer it lasts, the older I get, the more complicated it is 

to shuck off the weighty legacy.

I had a waking dream nightmare, where I was trying to dispose mentally

of all the items in my house, as if in readiness for an imminent move

to somewhere much smaller than my present abode.

The practical difficulties seemed overwhelming.

And yet so many people have to do just this,

perhaps at a time when they are physically least able to cope.

My parents had a large house which easily swallowed 

in its attics and outhouses

the baggage of a long lifetime, raising a family

and running a nursery school from the premises.

My mother was incorrigible.

'You'll have to deal with all this when I'm gone,' she said laughingly.

And when both parents died within five weeks of each other,

that is exactly what we had to do.

It was haphazard and brutal.

A skip was ordered and house clearance people got very lucky.

There simply wasn't time to make considered decisions.

Today I started my Kondo-ing again.

Poppylation explosion

I shook a pepper pot of poppy seeds

into an empty bed last autumn

and forgot about it.

Autumn delight

I mean, look at these.

Multicoloured berries,

like necklace beads,

or sugared almonds,

or tiny speckled blue eggs.

They were growing on some kind of vine

on a wire fence surrounding the tables

at a café in Kew Gardens.

I have never seen anything like them.

Nobody was taking any notice of them.

They weren't flagged up as seasonal highlights 

on the board at the entrance.

Finding them was a moment of pure delight.

If I can find out what they are

I'm going to grow them everywhere.

Racing along

This is the torrent of photos

 that was released when the spanner in the blogging works was unjammed.

It doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't have a neat story

to wrap round it except that this is how spring goes racing along here.

I've been busy making cards
from my old Brooke Bond tea card collection
which wasn't sparking joy but now is,

a cushion for the summer house
from an old curtain ditto,

passion fruit possets,

many more cards,

and looking after this funny little one, 
lately back from New York
sporting the latest in headgear
aka a neck cushion.