golden

This weekend the garden is still. Leaves are fading to palest yellow, bees are buzzing in patches of intense, low golden light. Everything is soft, rich, slow, gentle, quiet.

We are tilting towards autumn but not yet there. Late summer bees and hoverflies, the heady smell of still-flowering phlox, bright patches of colour as faded petals are caught in shafts of sunlight. The robin chinks his alarm call and a charm of goldfinches twitter overhead.

The wind is in the south-east, soft and light but strong enough to direct the large transatlantic jets over us as they climb out of Manchester Airport - sometimes, in the harsh bright overhead light of summer, their shadows pass across the garden, but this weekend they slant away to the south through a faint haze.

Another warm, still, golden day on Sunday, driving across the sunlit Pennines to the beautiful Yorkshire Sculpture Park to meet Helen of Cocoa and Blankets and her lovely family. We walked and walked and talked and talked. The men hit it off straightaway and forged ahead with the map, while we girls took a more leisurely pace better suited to civilised conversation.*

I am loving this last final stillness, a golden flourish before autumn blows in. The nights are getting chilly now, and soon it will be time for that bluey green driftwood fire I dream of...

Lastly, I couldn't resist showing you this photo of my beautiful granddaughter asleep on my shoulder this evening. Golden moments indeed.

*You can see more photos on Helen's much more interesting post which features naked wrestling...