Leaves Are Falling...

 

 

After a rather mild and sunny start to September, it's now getting more autumn-like. Today we've been having very "moody" weather with torrential showers and strong gusts of wind one minute, and sunshine and blue skies the next. I managed to fit in two short walks between showers, though - one before lunch (with trekking poles), and one after (without).  But I kept close to home, just walking around the old cemetery and nearby streets, as it was hard to predict how fast the weather might change. 

On my second round I came across this Red Admiral butterfly, trying to dry its wings in a sunny spot between showers. With all the rain we had in July-August, I have seen very few butterflies on the whole this summer.

Skywatch Friday

 

Friday sunset from my balcony

Linking to Skywatch Friday

Elsewhere and in Another Time

Oops, I see that somehow a week has flown by again without me posting anything new here. The rather summery temperatures have continued - but changing now, and it seems to be getting a bit more autumn-like again. I've been out on my daily walks, but just along the same old paths as usual; and for the most part I've let the camera rest. 

The thing is, in my head I've spent a lot of this week Elsewhere and in Another Time - which is not all that easy to illustrate by photos from the Here and Now...

Just now, I let Bing Image Creator have a go at it, though. My first instruction was simply 'Time Travelling 1920s' - which, for some reason, only rendered pictures of Men. I added the word 'Woman' for another search; and then created this collage using images from both:

Time Travelling 1920s - Images by Bing Image Creator

I also tried the phrase I used above - "Elsewhere and in Another Time". Besides mystic images, that also seems to have inspired Bing to invent a whole new language...

 

The "real story" is not quite as mysterious as all that; but it involves recently having been contacted by A Stranger, who some time ago happened to come across two of my ancestors in his own research for a book. And then he found me via my family history blog... 

 

And it is a little bit delicate, as he's writing about people (including my two ancestors) who ended their lives in a certain mental hospital. His book project is about trying to bring some of those tragic fates out of anonymity. Besides a draft of his chapter about my relatives, he also offered to send me scanned copies of their hospital records that he'd been able to access from visiting a physical archive (most of the hospital records so old now that they're no longer confidential). As I've been digging into that part of family history a bit myself, none of it was shocking news to me; and I don't mind him writing about it. But I've not had access to the full hospital records before, so I said 'yes please' to that... And I'm now spending some time comparing those to my own private family documents, to see what I can perhaps add. So that's where my mind has been a lot during the past week!  

Return of Summer; and the Big Dig

With a very confusing kind of summer behind us (hot and very dry May-June, cool and very rainy July-August), I suppose it shouldn't really come as a surprise that summer now seems to be starting over. If not for the hints of autumn colours in nature, today felt more like a return to spring/early summer: sunny and 21-22°C (~70F).

Passing the Travel Centre on my walk today, I bought an ice cream and sat down for a while in this little park nearby to eat it.

 

The horse chestnut trees downtown by the river are definitely turning to autumn colour.

Ten minutes walk from home for me (towards the city centre) they've just started digging to build a new supermarket (German Lidl). (This space was a parking lot before. When they're done, the new store will be on the ground floor, with parking on top.) Not sure it will change my shopping habits all that much (ordering most of my food online with home delivery every fortnight from a local Swedish supermarket). But we've been lacking a big supermarket in the city centre for ever so long now, so no doubt they'll attract a lot of customers. (And probably even me from time to time, as I often walk by that spot anyway.)

There's quite a lot of digging for other purposes going on in the neighbourhood as well - making it a bit tricky at the moment to guess which way into town may be the best to walk, from one day to another. In this street, they seem to be widening one of the pavements to probably also serve as a bike lane. (What - if anything - will happen to the other pavement remains to be seen.)

Goodbye August, Hello September

Decorations on the old chest in my living room
were changed to 'autumn colours' last weekend.

The last week of August seems to have "swooshed" by. For one thing, I woke up on Tuesday morning finding myself 68 years old, while when I went to bed the night before I was still 67. Really quite enough to make one a bit confused about the Passing of Time... ;-) 

I did not "celebrate" as in having a party; but  various greetings kept dropping in anyway - by mail, email and Facebook etc, + four long(ish) phone calls spread over the day. 

In between, in the early afternoon, I also went for a walk into town for a couple of minor errands + had an ice cream in the park. It was a "nice enough" day, although not quite as sunny as in the photos below ...

 

... which were taken a week earlier, when I was in town for a haircut.

Decided (in cooperation with my hairdresser) to have an attempt at a fringe (bangs) again. Not all that much hair to play with these days, though, so we'll see how it goes! 

The day before my birthday, I tidied up a bit on my balcony, after all the rain lately.

My strawberry plants have kept producing some berries in spite of all the rain during July and August. And even the single cherry tomato plant has given me a dozen or so fruits.

Photo from mid August