Of cabbages and kings

I found myself checking on a previous 5-year diary to see if November was usually this strange time of early dark but mild temperatures, and I'm relieved to find it was - for the last few years at least. I still haven't exhumed our winter duvet yet, and I think there's been only one night that I've regretted this fact, though it's something I associate with the beginning of the month ...

Today was utterly random, when I look back on it - hence the title. I washed and hung out the towels; there was very little drouth and I took them in at dusk barely drier than they'd been at breakfast time. I had a couple of fruitful phone calls - #1 son and a friend - and I got out to the garden and removed all the dead stalks from the phlox and the great billowing mass that was my tub of sweet peas. It's utterly miraculous that a handful of little seeds, or even the tiny delicate seedlings that sprouted from them, should turn into this huge clump of intertwined brownery (for there's only greenery right at the tops now). I shoved them all into a green bag and dumped it in the shed; it can go to the tip when there's a quieter time than a dry Saturday. 

Lunch was late because of a slight trauma over electricity meter reading which eventually resulted in a phone call with a real person, a totally obliging woman in Glasgow who sorted everything. Phew.

And because lunch was late getting out was later and the madness that drags us out in the gloaming was in full flow. We went down to the south of the peninsula and walked up the road between the farms and back down again in the silence. Even the beasts weren't making any sound, and there wasn't a breath of wind. This huge old tree stands at the gate of Toward Castle grounds, with its stark black overgrown trunk and stunted branches supporting a fine halo of russet leaves. I thought it was rather worthy of a Tree of the Day sort of shot ...

Caught the end of the Festival of Remembrance, just in time to be maddened by a solo singer resolutely ignoring the beat set by the bands and doing her own thing. And then the news, with the ending of COP and the troubling dilution of the doing away with coal to merely cutting down on its use. 

Now trying for bed before midnight ...