Shadows

Blipper Mima put me staight that the precise instant of the equinox was 06:49:06 UTC today. I stepped outside to attempt an equinox photo, but the sun was not high enough to reach us, and no iconic image presented itself. An hour later, I took the extra. The late summer rains have filled the barrel; after a period leaking and dripping, the timber has swelled, and it will now be watertight until the first drought of 2024

The world gave the impression that it knows we have crossed a threshold. The air feels cooler, with the first scent of damp decay. The light - for all that there is still power in the sun - suddenly has a composition to highlight seasonal browns and oranges. Shadows are sharper and deeper - even the transient shadows of these bees, arriving home laden with pollen and (I suspect) nectar from the first-flowering ivy. They have had a profitable day of warmth and brightness

Going large, you can see bright yellow granules of pollen attached to some of the back legs - with some hints that the extra weight does not do much for aerodynamoc stability! The electrostatically charged body hairs of bees attract pollen. They then use their legs to concentrate the pollen around some longer hairs on the back of their hind legs (misleasingly called 'pollen sacks') - sticking it together there with a drop of nectar. The returnees that do not have pollen almost certainly have nectar in the 'honey crop', also called 'honey stomach' (equally misleading, as it most commonly holds nectar, not honey, and it's not part of the digestive system) in their abdomen. They have to adjust the angle of their bodies in flight, to accommodate the changed weight distribution

Tonight we revisited the home that we sold eleven years ago. The new owners have been happy there (though one has now died), so it is a positive feeling. They have made many imaginative and wise improvements. It's odd that the moments that gave me little shocks as we looked around were not the things they have changed or added, but the things that we did - things I may have done with my own hands, or comissioned after discussion, planning, choosing. Little bits of our history left there; shadows from the past