Welcome to August

My garden in the early morning.

It’s funny how different months have different meanings, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s just me being fanciful, which is, after all, another part of my job. So here I am a little before half past five on Saturday morning on the first day of August, pondering how small changes have big outcomes. In this case, it’s changing where I sit in the living room so I am out of the draught from the open window and able to see the dawn coming up and the seagulls coming and going as well as hearing them. I can hear the pat, pat, bunny hop pat as our little black cat comes downstairs from our room where she’s spent the night.

She’s not such a wild cat now that the year is turning, and I like that. Her first owner died, and she chose to live with us after we saw her getting thinner and thinner. Logically, the last thing I needed was an injured cat who might never heal on top of two autistic children and my husband seriously ill, but I couldn’t leave her, and our lives are immeasurably richer because she and her son Willow honour us with their presence. Dynamo, in my Amy Hammond series, is modelled on Willow because he’s a happy clown of a one-cat crime wave.

Anyway, back to the month. It’s been such a hot, dry summer that the trees are starting to shed their leaves and I know the colour changes will be incredible and am looking forward to it. We’re officially in drought, and the drains haven’t got enough water to keep them from smelling, and I know that isn’t a romantic thought, but if life was romantic all the time, then you wouldn’t notice it, would you?

I’ve got out my flower lights to check them over and add extra colour to the garden, so I’ve been sneaking outside when it was dark to see which are working and watch the bats and the moths and the slinking cats. The cool is the temperature I like a summer day to be. Warm enough to only need a cardigan in the morning and evening and cool enough to be happy to move around.

At the moment, it’s jobs and walks in the early part of the day and then finding shade to write because I’m working on a new project which is going to be published in January. I’m not quite sure what category it falls into, so I’ll probably put it in the anthologies section, and it’s going to be called. “A Year at Swansmere.’ It’s about the background characters rather than a cosy mystery, although there are mysteries to be solved and a very unusual aftermath to an interview for one character. It’s let me get a feel for characters that are coming onstage and explore relationships. It’ll be interesting to see if people like it. If so, then I might well do it for Windy Bay next year.

I’ve finished the last of next year’s summer stories too, so it’s been productive despite the heat. Not a going out for long walks sort of productive because they’ve been setting up for Harbourfest, which is a music festival, but that’ll be gone by Wednesday. Besides, the garden did need a summer refresh, and my succulents root so quickly at this time of year that it’s an ideal time to take cuttings because they get a bit straggly with age.

Inside, though, as you can see from my Pinterest pages, I’m longing for rain. You can find my Pinterest here if you’re interested https://uk.pinterest.com/user_traowibn/_saved/ and the way it throws up pins amuses me because it knows where my mind is wandering to. So there’s about autumn and warm and cosy and dream gardens and sewing corners and information on setting boundaries and becoming me but better. Not a makeover or a glow-up. Just the sort of small changes I know I can sustain, just as the garden has sustained itself despite the heat.

So today's picture is of the garden, and a reminder to myself that I can and am making things better. I hope you can say and do the same and have a good weekend. And if you see any rain, then please send it to all the places with forest fires because they need it more than I do.