Fall fun?

OH is busy gardening as tho' it were summer, yet is planting spring bulbs for neighbour. I know Joy is having fun as she's been very busy in her kitchen making all sorts of goodies from an assortment of garden produce.
So, what about my Fall Fun?

More apples? Still one or two zucchini?

Hoping the late sunshine and warm temperatures ripen the rest of the tomatoes.

Taking advantage of the weather to dry washing on the line in the sunshine!

summer?

Summer in Autumn, an Indian Summer also known as St. Martin's summer. Typical of the last week in September and warmer than usual this year. Hence we have apples and apple blossom on some trees and I picked a few strawberries. 
Warm balmy weather ...

And this is where a borrow a picture from a friend...

keeping up with Faye?

Today's photo challenge is Fall decorations and this is where for a few days I'm going to come a cropper as the saying goes. Why? I'm across the pond and we don't tend to do much decoration at this time of year.
So apologies all round, but I'm going off on a tangent then at least I'm trying to keep up.

Mrs Blackbird had her nest inside the interwoven stems of our climbing roses. The roses have lost their leaves and so the nest is revealed. OH trained the roses horizontally along the workshop. From there other branches headed skywards so the whole area was full of blooms throughout the summer.

Weather for soup?

Over the past week or so there's been so many ripe tomatoes that soup-making seemed a good idea. However, I learnt the hard way years ago that too much of a good thing can have side-effects. I now make vegetable soup with a high proportion os tomatoes in it rather than mostly tomatoes otherwise I might have an allergic reaction.

 Home-grown tomatoes, onions and courgette make a good soup base.

topsy turvy

Oops who posted fruits yesterday instead of today!
So here's some autumn flowers...

Autumn pansies - heart's ease

Fuchsias still in flower

I think this is pieris

Click into Autumn mf

Bramley apple

Ballerina apples

Click into Autumn

Here is the Challenge......from Faye of Summit Musings
September 23rd is the beginning of Autumn so, to celebrate this most gorgeous time of the year, I thought it would be fun to host the Two Weeks in Autumn Photo Challenge. Look around you as you go about your daily lives the next two weeks and see if you can capture the magic of autumn with your camera. 

Safely gathered in...part of this year's onion crop

access versus inaccessibility

One of my close friends and neighbours does remarkably well despite her 'visual handicap'. Or as she would prefer me to say Blindness. Hardly a day goes by without her encountering people who seem unable to cope with what being blind means. From the store assistant to public service worker all have a blind-spot where blindness is concerned.  
The next round of tax assessments has a deadline for the end of the month...M contacted the DWP by phone to find out which form was needed. Okay, she now knew the form, but how to get one? Reply from the DWP 'we no longer publish print copies'. But you can get it from such n such website. M can no longer use a computer. Reply from the DWP go to an internet café or try your local library. The mind boggles at the stupidity of the DWP representative! Tax is vexing, it is also private data that no-one wants to have broadcast publicly.
Hence I've been on-line, downloaded and printed what she needed. One copy of the instructions and a loose copy of the form. Another friend does the form filling. 
I can't help it...am seething at the institutionalised ignorance in everyday life.

Movies that make you think

Jesus Christ Superstar  - the early 70s when I saw more films than ever before! My room mate and I were in digs and a short bus ride away there was college; and also a fabulous cinema which is now a supermarket. JCS was an amazing film, like no other seen before with David Essex in starring role. The audience left afterwards in awed silence...
The Way We Were...a lovely weepy film with memorable music; starring the gorgeous Robert Redford.
Spool thro' the years, and it was not until the likes of Harry Potter and the LOTR trilogy that I began cinema going again. I enjoyed the Potty Harry films and adore LOTR; but then the latter has been part of my life in book form, followed by tape cassette, video cassette, DVD and now Kindle edition for many years.
Fantasy films, enchanting scenery and music ... what else? I viewed them in Dublin!


Many thanks to Sayre for rendering first aid and putting life back into Fun Monday.

Autumn

or as friends in the US would say 'Fall'... Time to have to wipe the car windows before setting off as they drip with condensation. A beautiful day, foggy in some places, but as the sun climbs in the sky it clears away all traces. Then there's a slight chill to the air even in the sunshine. A time for memories...perhaps because for many years the beginning of September was also the start of the Autumn term. No more netball, but hockey instead. Running circuits of the hockey pitches to warm-up before the lesson began. Three pitches side-by-side and you have to go around the outside, no cutting corners. Boots caked in mud and a divil to clean...dashing thro' cold communal showers at the end of the game; no toiletries apart from talc and deodorant. 
Remembering the long walk to school in the Autumn sunshine, viewing a temperature inversion shown by clouds as taught to us in a recent geography lesson. Looking ahead at the view of Pendle that dominates the area for miles around.
As Autumn progressed more and more leave dropped from the trees. So many copper beeches and tree-lined avenues. Oh what fun to kick your way thro' tumbled leaves!

Just an ordinary day?

Awaken, get up and dressed then let the dogs out into the garden. Feed them. Yes, they have two meals per day. In fact quite a lot of the day revolves around them.
Guess who forgot something quite important! Tomatoes! In fact going to open the greenhouse door wide every morning, checking on the toms, feeding/watering them and harvesting the newly ripened ones!
I'm coming to the end of my studies for this year (February to October inclusive). Things are rather fraught as I have 2000 words to find for a report. Then there's a series of web pages to construct using an antiquated user unfriendly program with the unlikely name of Web Wizard. It's a course about the environment and my topic is Fracking (hydraulic fractioning). I've given myself till the end of the week to complete the report.
So, after breakfast I settle down to read, make notes and think thro' the project. After a couple of hours it's time to let the dogs out to as my friend M says 'make them comfortable. Settling back to my studies until about 2.30 pm... Now it's time for their 'constitutional' an old-fashioned term meaning to go for a walk. I put their leads and OH goes our with them. Suddenly there's peace and quiet...time to use the vacuum cleaner without being challenged by z-dog who seems to think it needs a 'seeing to'.
The threesome return...all noise and bustle.


Almost forgot to say "Thank you" to Sayre for posting the topic. She very kindly gave everyone another opportunity to take part in Fun Monday.

freshers

B has gone to uni in Scotland and this week is Freshers Week. Time for stirring memories to the surface...
Spool back some 40 years and I left home for college.
What a contrast...B was chauffeured by her Dad from door to door. 
I went by bus. No car only as Dad would say 'Shank's pony'.
The journey took 3 hours as the bus zig-zagged west and then south; one that these days is 40 mins door-to-door.
B has her cell phone and laptop and uni will have internet access as standard for students.
In my day correspondence was by letter and I wrote regularly to friends and family. No phone at home only at Dad's work so he'd phone once a week. How I treasured hearing his voice!
Contrast today's student in constant touch with her social networks.

interconnectivity

Earlier in the year I received an email from someone trying to get in touch. Being rather wary of 'bolts from the blue' I mulled it over before replying. Months passed and no other contact so it went to the back of my mind as such things do.
August and another email this time with more detail - the daughter of a friend of my father, who'd been best man at his wedding. So now my curiousity piqued. Sent replies and received none, but the correspondent had set a deadline for the end of August.
Time to practise web searches and I found some details, address and phone number that seemed to fit the bill. Phoned the other week and no answer, so I determined to have one last go and then forget about it.
August 31st and I phoned the number...someone answered...but the connection kept failing. Tried by landline and 'success' she was who she said she was!
Yesterday evening she phoned and we spent over an hour chatting.
So now my very sparse personal history has fewer gaps...
And still her words resound in my consciousness...