The sun has shifted closer to the horizon, and breakfast is taken with the glare full in our eyes. After almost two years here, there are still bird calls I can t identify. Other singers are less secretive. This morning a line of six or eight children came threading down the footpath between our garden wall and the stream. Young voices rose and fell, meeting and blending and separating again like a plaited garland of wild flowers - a little ragged, but joyfully unselfconscious.
Autumn stings the eyes like wood smoke.
It s been a fearful month. Full of illness, mishap and frenetic activity. I m not sad to see the back of it. I m more than ready to welcome in May, it s three simple letters seem symbolic of a slowing down of the seasons. Somehow in the last week there has been no time for a story to filter down from my brain to my fingers, and I stand before you empty handed.