Time for Autumn

It is the time of chrysanthemums in this North Canterbury Secret Garden. A single plant romps with gay abandon through the rose bushes along the verandah. No need for staking when there are handy rose bushes nearby.

Time for medlars too - if they take your fancy... Friend Jo found a crop in an old garden and we've Googled them, admired their rosehip forms, and yes, tasted them. There's no need for any laying out on sawdust. They just 'blet' quietly and within a few days, in a bowl on the kitchen bench - the skin changes from firm, to wrinkled and soft. If you can push yourself past the feeling that they are rotten fruit - I decided that they looked like spicy buns instead - medlars have a light apple flavour, with the gritty texture of cooked quince. But eating around the large seeds is fiddly and not very rewarding. I can understand why they are used in preserves instead of as a fresh-ish fruit. I'd still like to have a few trees here in the Secret Garden for their lovely flowers and foliage, so yes, I have saved some seed.

There has been time for celebrating Mothers

with Kitty's treat of a sun-filled breakfast tray to begin Mothers' Day,

and afternoon tea with my own mother.

It was time for someone to move house! 

This one - possibly a refugee from the Earthquake Red Zone - was parked in the village for nearly a fortnight. 

There was a time to wash and dry a new stash 
of pretty linen for my shop. 

It is time to look to the Future.

I found this silver ball at the same dump shop as the linen. 

The silver ball is for me, not my shop.

When I was a child in the 60s, one of these set on a pedestal, was a genteel garden ornament. I was enchanted by them.

They belonged with rose bushes in a row along each side of the path. 

They belonged with a white ceramic swan displayed on the front window sill.

Time passed and they became very uncool in my generation's eyes. 

That neat front garden ethic: it's almost gone now - replaced all along those suburban streets with 1.8 metre plank fences - for privacy of course.

But the ball, the ball... I have wanted one (or more) to float in the occasionally flowing ephemeral stream ever since Elwin and I placed our house to overlook it. 

How strange to have come across this one, streaked with paint and jammed into a cardboard box at the dump shop, at a time when I am constantly questioning where I belong and whether I should stay here. 

You're not finished here; remember to come back,

the ball is telling me as I fly off into Arabian Nights and Summer days.

Medlar  Mespilus germanica