September?? Today is October 16th

I've just opened this blog for the first time in ages....

where did September go?

The shed looks like this now:

Two coats of wood treatment, applied in the blazing sun have transformed it. The snails haven't found the lettuces in the window box yet.

the agapanthus are dying back;

from how they were back in the Summer

Autumn is properly here.

Although no-one seems to have told the Love-in-a-mist,

or the Nemesia that escaped from a patio tub last Summer and seeded itself in a crack by the front door.

September disappeared in a flurry of activity; the start of term is always hectic, and it took me about three weeks to get the various schedules sorted out for school classes, school piano teaching and my own piano teaching at home. That used up a huge amount of patience and mental gear changing, and I still haven't dared write it in my diary in ink.

Another great project was getting the house and garden respectable for visiting relations. Little things, like at last fitting locks to the bathroom and loo door. We took them off 28 years ago when the children were toddlers, but now they are properly grown up it's probably okay to reinstate the locks. The only problem is that I am totally out of the habit of using them... luckily there were no "incidents" while our visitors were with us!

We had a terrific week while out cousins were here. It was term-time, so I was working, but managed to join in several trips at the weekend. During the week, BB took them round various local sights and wonders, and in the evening we caught up on all the news.

Now it's mid-October. Just ten weeks until the end of term, eleven weeks until Christmas, twelve weeks until 2017. Now that's something to think about.