At home

Each day the trees look more beautiful, which is some solace against the constitutional crisis and the shortening days.

This morning I went in the bathroom for a shower, and the morning sun on the silver birches was so stunning I rushed to get my phone.

In the bottom centre of the picture above you can see the new lawn Dave made this year under the plum tree.

I leaned out of the window and looked to the left and took these two pictures of the village, 4 minutes apart, and dropped my phone in the process. Fortunately it fell in the wash basin, not out of the window.

We had two new carpets fitted this week, and it's meant moving furniture around and all kinds of clutter have been exposed. When replacing the cuddly toys on the games shelf on the landing I decided that my twin dolls, survivors of the disastrous fire in 1996, should not go back. Children shrink from them, understandably, so they are going in a box in the attic, with their original clothes that I knitted for them when I was seven. The ones they are wearing now are the ones my mother knitted for them after the fire, as one of her loving contributions.

This morning Dave told me he had rescued four cardboard tubes from the carpet man because they will be a wonderful addition to our marble run apparatus.

Dave wanted to demonstrate the tubiness of them for a photo for the girls, so he's holding one up and looking down it. I don't know when the girls will visit again: I hope they won't be too old for marble runs.

You can see (can't you?) why we have a clutter problem in this house. They have now been processed and are in the attic and we've just realised they would be a safe-saving place to store the yoghurt cartons.

I should be writing this morning, but it's fine and still and perfect gardening weather, so I'm going to begin to tidy the garden for winter.