September

Picture from June 2017

I was quite pleased with myself today because I managed to mow our bottom lawn. Yesterday was grey and wet but today there was a break in current weather systems. To my surprise, not a drop of rain fell. At one thirty or thereabouts, I manoeuvred my sturdy electric "Bosch" mower from our underhouse and cracked on with the job.

Here in England, grass tends to grow very little indeed after the end of September but if your lawn is to be short throughout the winter, you need to get it cut when it is dry enough. If not, you will have scraggy grass till spring comes round again.

It takes me over an hour to mow our bottom lawn and this afternoon I had to carry six filled grass boxes to the pile near our compost bins. There was a 20% chance of rain at around 1600 hrs but it never came. In the winter months it will be nice to look out on a grassy sward that has the appearance of a bowling green. Privet hedges don't grow in the wintertime either so I am pleased that I cut all of our hedging last week.

Already we have passed the autumn equinox and days are much shorter. Heavens, it is pretty much pitch dark by seven o'clock now and in the morning the sun is not up before 0700. We are at that half and half period before we plunge deeper into the darkness. Of course it is a familiar pattern.

Our lovely daughter Frances will be thirty six on Thursday. How the hell did that happen? 

She will be going on holiday with her family in early November. A week on Lanzarote in The Canary Islands. So Shirley and I have been thinking that we might go somewhere too. Perhaps to the Portuguese island of  Madeira for we have never been there before and this could be the perfect opportunity. We'll see.

And now to finish this autumnal blogpost, here's a song that Buffy Sainte-Marie released in 1971 - "Sweet September Morning". It was the year I visited Sheffield for the very first time - specifically to see her in concert at The City Hall. Back then, I never guessed for a moment that I would spend most of my adult life in this city.

And he tells you of his guiding star

And then he starts his journey to the center of your dreaming

And he knows what he knows like the trees do

And you go where he goes when he needs you to, Oh . .

Sweet September morning

When I found him in my heart, in my heart