The Rains Have Arrived. At last, buckets of the stuff after nearly three months! And it’s real ‘wet rain’ pouring through the stormy nights to replenish the parched garden and fill the aquifers. It’s come too late for some plants and trees but it’s very welcome. The visitors have gone and all is now quiet down in the bay where cooler afternoon walks are most enjoyable, especially the intense colours at this time of year.
The autumn has come about four weeks early because of the drought with most of the harvests already in, and the balers seem to have finished for the year. My tomatoes are still going, and we have had enough of them, and other veggies, to make batches of my favourite firey orangey-red soup, cucumber raita and potato salad.
The aggies, the great survivors, are going over but those abundant seed heads will spawn a new generation of plants next year. The glossy Abelia is doing well and the Rosa has turned early to give its autumnal bright red hips. And that’s it for this summer.
The fully fledged gull chicks have moved to their new residence down on the beach while we build a new sun deck to replace the rotting underframe of the old one. It’s hard to keep on top of the long-term effects of constant salt-blasting and winter rain but it’s part of life by the sea. The project has grown and grown as it’s on terraced land but we are almost there … hoping! And the chimney for the pizza oven has arrived … that’s the next job before the winter.
Work on the new book continues slowly as life by the sea guzzles much time. And I’ve been working on the audio version of Louisa’s Lament. Following many auditions of voice actors, I think we now have the ‘voice’ of the book after much anxiousness about whether it should be male or female. Next, it’s the test and time runs and commissioning a suitable production company. Then it’s back to the exhibition posters, BookTok fun gobbets and the play script and stage directions. It’s going to be a busy autumn and winter. Don’t know how other authors cope with it all.