Got back from Bonnie Scotland, and almost immediately succumbed to what seemed a mild enough chesty-coughy thing. End of that first week back was Grand Planting Day for Maysie Memorial Garden. Back home sat down with a nice cup of tea, and promptly lost my voice. Completely. Amusing enough for the first couple of days, since it didn't actually hurt, but by the weekend the novelty was wearing off. By the weekend, I could rasp out the odd word here and there -- very oddly, admittedly. So Saturday JN and I sortied out to Wood Green High Rd to pick up the Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes book I'd ordered from the guys at Big Green Bookshop, and managed to achieve all the other useful items on our little list -- including miniature bat stickers for the Addams Family mansion that I have sitting by to make (1/24th scale, from Woodcraft 'fantasy villa' kit).
Sunday, glorious sunshine, so we yomped down to Walthamstow Reservoirs for our own local Autumnwatch experience -- lots of great crested grebes, several little grebes, shovellers, cormorants, herons, swans, lots of tufties, lots of angling chaps, and I caught three fleeting kingfisher glimses. Then up the Lea canal to the cafe at Stonbridge Lock for a cuppa. Then onward to the next bridge, back via the two new bridges that link to Wild Marsh East and Chingford, and home past East Marsh allotments to watch Time Team, Roy Strong on landscape art (managed to not actually mention nature -- though he did note it as a form of response to ecological catastrophe) -- and David Attenborough.
Today glorious sunshine again, so after an early lunch I pottered out to cut back a few untidy bits of garden. Found one of our rose bushes has buds about to open on almost every branch, so postponed its pruning. Nonetheless made three vases of flowers: hot pink nerine lilies and fuchsia in a tall brass vase; autumn roses in a gothic purple vase, and a small fountain of fuschia in purple glass. Down to the allotment with the rest of the prunings for the big compost heap. Nasturtiums all frosted to death, so into the compost with them. Bumper crop of big fat raspberries -- one of the best we've had all year. Also picked mass of rocket leaves, plus a self-sown lettuce starting to bolt, sorrel, alexanders and parsley. Just packing up when there was a shout from down the gate. New chap making his first visit to his plot, with a couple of tiddlers at foot, had his key break off in the gate padlock, which meant none of us could get out. The two others of us there helped him climb out over the fence and passed out the kids. Luckily he lives just around the corner and within a few minutes was back with a pair of pliers, pulled out the broken-off bit of key, and we were free.
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