Flowering cracks

The edge of our porch is eroding; the cracks fill with soil and various plants self-seed inside.

There are always the ever-present mimulus and snapdragons; this year, I see pansies, gazania, nasturtium and celosia too.

I know that their roots damage the floor even further, but I think that it is beautiful to have flowers blooming in the cracks, so I can’t bring myself to remove them.

Even whole small trees were growing there. Yesterday I realised one of them was getting quite big and its roots could cause serious damage, so I asked Nick to cut it off.

I started reading “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine”.

It seems heavier that the usual reads that I choose, but this one was recommended by a fellow blogger and I thought it looked promising.

Boris takes chess quite seriously. When we play on the porch in the afternoon, he wants to leave the board as it is after the end of the game, so that he could contemplate and analyse it later. I usually find it like this when I get up in the morning and I go outside, along with an empty glass of pomegranate juice (his favorite) or milk.

Autumn seemed to start in an instant.

Om Sunday afternoon we went to visit Nick’s brother and his family at their cottage. We were having a good time sitting at their porch; we haven’t seen each other in a long time, so we had a lot to catch up. Nick made some cocktails, cats were strolling around, and the kids were playing all kinds of board/card games. Suddenly a strong wind blew, paper napkins went flying everywhere and it got too chilly to stay outside.

I read somewhere that August 28 (Nick’s birthday) was the day when many storks took off from here every year and headed South; they had some sort of inner calendar. So, I guess the time was right.

I checked the weather forecast; it turned out that the night temperatures would be too low for many plants, so we had to assemble the greenhouse the same day and move the pots inside.

I hoped summer would last a bit longer; this June was too cool, so the whole season went by too fast.

The tigridias started to flower.

The blooms are smaller than the ones we had before, but I am still happy to have them. Last year the tigridias burst open in June, and now they did not look too well, so I thought they might not flower at all.

I’ve been ridiculously absent-minded lately; this often happens to me when the seasons change. A few days ago, I knocked down the porch fountain, tripping over its cable, and it broke down. We were not too enthusiastic about it anyway, as its pump turned out to be too weak; it did not look too good either, but we thought we could decorate it somehow.

Last night our new solar “garden ghost” was charged for the first time and its eyes lit up. I wanted to take a picture, so I put it on the railing but it somehow lost balance and fell down from the porch. Needless to say, it broke in multiple pieces… I was so upset; it was really cute. Its eyes were still glowing though; NIck said he could use them to make another lamp from a log.

This morning, when I checked my weight as usual, the scale showed that it had doubled overnight. I was bewildered and I asked Nick what could be wrong; he said he may have accidentally switched it to display pounds instead of kilograms while changing the batteries. It seemed funny later, but at that moment I was feeling too sleepy and I really didn’t know what to make of it.

Then I pricked my finger on the needle of the sewing machine; a bit later my flimsy cotton blouse caught on a pin and it tore. I had to mend it with an embroidery patch that I cut out from my stash of second hand fabrics.

This is the jacket I was working on, “Afternoon Jungle”.

I designed the back, inspired by my favorite tropical world.