Tag: Indian summer

A Burst Of Summer

Mike, the Perfect Plastering and Plumbing man who came this morning to replace our leaking outside taps, not only did a very good job with them, but also turned out to be an Apple user, and gave me advice subsequently confirmed by the iMac adviser.

The news about the iPhoto disaster, like the curate’s egg, is good in parts. When the latest edition of the Yosemite operating system was installed, iPhoto was superseded by Photos. I didn’t use that because I was reluctant to change from the application with which I was familiar. However, without my realising it, all my photographic work had been automatically copied into Photos. Thereafter I had happily continued to use iPhoto, but there was no further entry to Photos. That, I should have been doing myself.

There is no way of recovering the deleted iPhoto files. The last images entered into Photos were therefore inserted on the updating day in May this year. All photographic work carried out between then and yesterday has been lost.

Thankfully, everything posted on WordPress remains on the blog, so it could have been worse.

Since the end of July I have been unable to use e-mail on the iMac. Whilst I had Apple Care on the phone, I asked Leonel, the excellent adviser, to sort that out for me. He did.

So, it wasn’t all bad.

As so often in September, we are experiencing a late burst of warm and sunny weather, called ‘an Indian summer’.

Rose garden

The benefits are seen in the rose garden,

rose New Dawn

where New Dawn is now blooming.

View along Pergola Path

Paths, such as the Pergola one, are still surrounded by lush plants.

Butterflies Small White on lobeliabutterfly Small White on lobelia

The air fluttered with Small White butterflies, seemingly auditioning for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, ‘The Birds’.

Insect on bidens

A small insect, possibly an ant, clung to tiny bidens.

Red hot poker

We have several clusters of light, almost chocolate-coloured red hot pokers.

When I had finished the lengthy phone call I helped Jackie finish bagging up the rubble left over from Aaron’s brickwork, and spreading the last bit of gravel. After lunch we transported the rubble to Efford recycling centre. As I prepared to enter the car, the Head Gardener politely sent me back inside for my wallet. Naturally, she had no wish to visit the municipal dump without investigating the sales area. We came away with two more mirrors, and two more garden chairs.

As usual yesterday’s set meal for three from Hordle Chinese Take Away provided plenty left over for our dinner tonight. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I finished the shiraz.

 

Indian Summer

Becky and her family are staying another night, so Jackie and I left them at home this afternoon while we spent a couple of hours at a barbecue party at friends Kathy and Rob’s at Walkford. On our return I watched the second half of the Test match highlights with Ian.
We were not aware that the theme of this party was ‘Indian Summer’ and required us to dress accordingly. Therefore we didn’t. But I was wearing sandals. There is much confusion about the origin of the term that is applied to a stretch of unseasonably warm weather on the approach to autumn. The Indians referred to are most likely native Americans, but it is also thought to evoke the weather of the Indian Ocean. It was not surprising therefore to find a more or less equal number of outfits representing North Americans and the people of the Indian sub-continent.
Our hosts were apparently in no doubt and provided a delicious range of curries. We took one bottle each of red and white wine, of which we sampled a little.
Jackie c1990 02Jackie’s sisters, who were both present, remembered the gorgeous blue sari I had bought my lady for her twenty first birthday in 1969. She still possessed it in about 1990 when this photograph was taken.
By the early 1970s we had discovered Maya Rani. Maya was an Indian woman who made and sold clothes with Indian cottons and silks from her basement flat in Finborough Road in Fulham. Derrick 8.74 02She made a number of outfits for each of us. In August 1974 I still wore some of the shirts she produced, like the one in this photo taken by Jessica in our flat in Soho. In this picture I am wearing the patched trousers of the brown velvet suit, the demise of which was  featured on 17th November last year. The books behind me are in some of the Chinese boxes I described on 14th September 2012.
Jackie was able to join the others in enjoying a spaghetti Bolognese cooked by Becky. I wasn’t, because I had had two plates of curry earlier. Becky wishes the world to know that she ‘imbibed diet Pepsi’.