in and out of a borrowed dress

branches, someblackberryingMade a basket on saturday night (with L’s tuition and help) while eating wonderful leftovers from D and R’s wedding, and picked blackberries early this morning to soak into vinegar for comforting winter drinks and dressings. I had been asked what the basket would be for, and today I know, berry- or flower-picking. A friend from Switzerland from long ago had a lovely small fruit-picking basket with hoops to attach to one’s waist with a belt to enable two-armed picking, I aim to reinvent this and make my own version.
Pretty submerged in back-to-school preparations, lists, nervousness, driving into town, driving into town again, last-minute sewing, making quick soda bread for school sandwiches. September seems like an abstraction still although the weather is noticeably autumnal, grey, wet and windy.

curtains,-there
 
 
signwritingThe Summer was only a few days ago : walking along the river in Derry city, the wedding, the party… The children and I made (Ikebana-ed?) all the flower arrangements, large and small, from wild or home-grown flowers with a handful stolen from Knockvicar organic garden, my lovely old haunt. Proud as punch (or “as a head lice” as we say in French !) we were (and perhaps still are).
I borrowed three beautiful dresses from D, wore the embroidered one and am now hoping for two more parties to go to before I return them, but parties are pretty rare around my life these days. There are other kinds of excitement aplenty for which I wear my own clothes under my favourite boiler suit : build a new bridge where I once slipped, fell and almost crushed my back, new raised beds to be, hmm, raised, and plotting to plant last year’s garlic that seems to have kept remarkably well. Autumnal pursuits I guess. There are other kinds of less exciting stuff on my plate too like wheelbarrowing all the manure out of the goat sheds to name but one, but I will be up for it in time, I like the Autumn, I do.

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