October: 'Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness.'
My mother always quoted this line from 'To Autumn' by John Keats and for the first time today I looked up the poem to see if I had the quotation correct. I am not a poetry lover but this one is too beautiful and describes this time of the year perfectly. Now to find pictures to fit the words chosen by Kate and possibly of autumn too.Umbrella
This picture was taken in our garden when Kate was about three years old. I have not looked at it close up for years and when I looked closely I saw it was one of my mothers, had red stripes and flowers on it. Not thought of it for years. This is what is special about using pictures from ones archives. Memories.
This is my own much larger umbrella, one of those with hidden vents to prevent it turning inside out in the wind. I used it one windy day this year and what did it do.....turned inside out!! Though to give it its due, it was exceptionally windy.
Wet
When we lived in South Africa we had a lovely ginger cat we called Thomas. Like most cats in Southern Africa he wore a tick/flea collar under his regular one. The trouble was he would not wash himself and as we had only one cat he did not have a companion to wash his ears and back of his neck. His hair under his collar was always full of red earth and the only way to get it out was to bath him; something he hated. You can see from the photograph he is very wet and unhappy. Poor Thomas.
He was very tall, long legs and even his back seemed longer than usual. Impossible I know as he must have had the same number of vertebra as normal. He could stretch up and try to steal food from your plate on the dining room table.
Overflowing
I know that this should be a very autumnal/wet set of pictures but when I walked into the kitchen of a friend's house and saw her daughter trying to put glace icing on a still warm cake, the word that jumped out at me was 'overflowing'. Now I think about it, it was a wet and windy day so maybe that could be the link with my watery pictures.
Splash
Here are two of my favourite pictures. the first is of 'Eldest Grandchild' having fun on a very hot African day splashing in the birdbath. The look on his face is priceless.
The second picture is another of my favourites. It is of our son and son-in-law having fun in the swimming pool.
My Own Choice
On a recent trip to Scotland to stay with our family there we went on our wedding anniversary to see the Coffee Bothy just outside Stirling. The car park was full of beautiful sculptures in wood and metal but what caught my eye was the cow on the roof. What an advertisement for a coffee shop. It was actually more than that, had beautiful homemade jams and a large selection of other gifts as well as beautiful wooden furniture and art. We had a delicious lunch in one of the two restaurants. It was so nice we went back again on the last day of our stay there.
Now to go and look at how everyone else has interpreted the selection of words this month.
