Celebrating Autumn

Today has felt like a normal person's Saturday, without that driven feeling, without any existential angst, with the two pending huvtaes neatly parked on the "to do on Monday" shelf. True, it was another miserably wet morning, the rain dripping down the back windows, but I had clearly decided this was an excuse to take things easy. I was insanely late finishing breakfast, and had really just cleared up when my friend Di, fresh from her Covid incarceration,  arrived for coffee and a belated birthday visit. We sat for a good two hours, catching up on everything, laughing immoderately at the shared perplexity at the way men always dry their hands on the same bit of towel and sundry such observations. We even raised the cheering possibility of a girly  get-away in the early spring ...

We didn't eat lunch till 2pm. 

At around 4 o'clock I noticed the sky was once again lightening, only this time to the north. It was time to go out.

We've not been in Benmore Gardens much at all these last weeks - life suddenly became either full or weighed down with jag malaise - so I'd not been able to see if any of the trees had developed autumn colours yet. I've been aware that some of the trees I've seen elsewhere have been more tired-looking than autumnal, leaves just turning a dull brown and falling off, so it was with a sense of joy that I saw the big golden trees in the car park as we turned in. I can't adequately convey the effect of the riches of colour of this afternoon, especially as the sun came out for a short while before declining behind the hills of Glen Massan, so I've chosen the photo I took at the pond as my main blip and a collage of some of the reds and golds elsewhere in the garden as an extra. 

I'm sure I heard a stag bellowing as we came through the empty gardens on our way out - it sounded as if it were in the garden itself, then as if it was travelling across the glen. And as we arrived back at the car a robin was singing its heart out.

A good day.