I walk late afternoon on Saturday....
they have cut the sides of the hedges and the waving bramble branches which were growing over the foot path...
so I don't have to do any "bundu bashing" as we used to call it in Africa ( clearing your way through thick bush)....
lovely ruminating cows.. having a quiet chat...
a few months ago this green crop was a field of ripening barley...
I'm not sure what it is...it looks a bit like Mizumi salad leaf...but it maybe something for the cows.
The Russian vine growing over the wall in my front garden has started to turn red and pale gold.
Saturday night...even though it's not really cold I light a fire in the grate. It takes the damp bleakness out of the air.
First fire since last winter.
I love the flames ...but I start thinking about NOT having a wood burner next year.
Even though I've bought one and it's waiting in the shop for me to collect it when I'm ready...
Sunday, in unexpected warm sunshine,
I kick a football around with my great-nephew in the cut wet grass of his grandparents' garden.
He teaches me how to kick it with the side of my foot....but since I'm wearing wellies I don't score many goals.
" You have to kick it much harder," he says. I still miss.
"Why do you cheer when I get a goal? " he says.
"That's what grown-ups do," I say.
"I want you to win more than I do.
And anyway you are miles better at football than I am. I've got such big feet."
"I have noticed that", he says.
It may be the last time we play in this garden.
Today I spend my birthday money in the White Stuff sale....a denim tunic...a light chestnut coloured jumper....looking for autumn warmth.
I could have gone on...but I'm a flakey shopper....I lose the will to live after about an hour...and it starts to pour with rain.
I need to pay a cheque into my bank. I haven't been there for a while. I don't recognise it inside.
All the cashier tills, except one tucked around a corner, have disappeared.
Replaced with one ATM.
A woman in the bank's uniform shows me how to use it. I feel as if I've wandered into a slot machine hall in Tokyo.
I want to make soup to take with me tomorrow when I visit the family in Bristol. I settle on asparagus and buy a bundle in Waitrose ...but not being in season it doesn't have much flavour. So I call it leek and potato soup with asparagus and perk it up with lots of herbs from the garden - parsley and rosemary, Vietnamese basil and oregano. And hope it will be suitable for delicate stomachs.
When I have carried in the empty re-cycling boxes this evening, when the light is fading - they call it dimpsy in Devon - I walk the perimeter of my garden. I can just make out the dark shapes of the cows, heads down, in the field, and I search the top of the birch trees, following the insistent call of a bird....till I see him swoop down to the concrete slabs of the swimming pool and hop back and forth along the low wall...a sweet robin.
And then another call, way beyond the stream and the trees, unmistakable, an owl hooting in the dusk....the whole mystery of the night ahead of her.
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