In The Minatour's Maze

I make my first jars of raspberry jam today with the bounty from my sister's garden.  I try doing a reduced sugar version, but with pectin and lemon juice - without an exact recipe -  and thinking it might not set I over-cook it. 

It's still incredibly sweet - but then jam is.

Probably best not to eat jam if you are trying to avoid sugar.

Tonight's sweet peas from the allotment - to compliment the colour of my raspberry jam.

This evening we walk in the totally deserted gardens at Killerton House,

still blazing with feasting bees and late summer colour.

And the trees standing sentinel

over this family of wicker deer,

so beautifully and realistically crafted.

This driftwood horse was for sale in the plant shop - I didn't look at the price  - but  love the creative  endeavour of the artist - I can almost hear the breath in his nostrils....

All day  I wrestle in my mind with an ongoing sticky messy problem. Standing in my new place of power..... of inquiry and determination instead of I can't do this/I don't know how to do this/ I'm hopeless, it's too difficult, I ask for help..... talk to a friend who knows stuff that I don't or knows "a man who does"....and he guides me between the rock and the hard place.....Still it's not resolved, still scary, but I feel I have a thread to hold on to in the Minatour's maze.....feel so grateful, so lucky.

The air is as warm and soft as breath tonight.... hovering outside my open window. The students are back for the new term, partying in the street, their shouting/laughing voices climbing up through my window - carefree. At least that what it sounds like but I know students are no more free of cares than me -it's just that maybe they know how to take a break from them. My version of taking a break is to make a cup of tea and sit on the sofa or watch old re-runs of Lewis on TV......  and like Scarlett O'Hara say to myself,

I'll think about that tomorrow.

When I'm fresh.