It’s the time of the year when I really feel my energy flagging and have to make a concerted effort to keep going. Going out in the middle of the day to get some daylight is an important part.

Today I was working from home so I spent my daylight therapy session in the garden with my camera. A surprising number of brave little flowers are still flowering – outliving their wilted comrades, tucked away among dead leaves.

While I was away in London, the cherry trees dropped all their remaining leaves. Really, I could have raked them last weekend, if I had had time, but there was the crafts fair and then trip prep and a concert.

The leaves are well past the crisp and colourful stage, now all brown and wet and sticky. Still reasonably easy to rake together.

I missed my chance to mow the grass one last time when summer was over – the weather got wet before I got around to it – so now it lies flat. Other people may have manicured lawns; I have well-combed grass.

It’s more or less dark when the working day is over. Plain old digging can be done in lamplight at a pinch, but planting requires daylight, so I took a gardening break in the middle of my work-from-home day today.

I had put some Aquilegias at the front of the new planting, but the deer ate them within a week or so. I’ve now moved them to the slope on the other side of the garage, where I think the deer are unlikely to go, and put other stuff here.

It struck me today that my choice of plants is heavily skewed towards the beginning of the alphabet, because the garden centre at Ulriksdal arranges their plants alphabetically within each section, and A is closest to the entrance. In place of the Aquilegias I have Astrantias and Asters. Next time I need to select plants, I’m going to walk all the way to the far end and start at Z.

An “open loop” is a term that David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, uses to refer to unfinished commitments – anything that needs to be acted upon, finished, or decided. Most people have most their open loops in their heads, but they can also be physical things. Every time you walk past it, it reminds you – oh, right, I should really be doing something about this.

Somehow I had accumulated a lot of physical open loops recently. Every room in the house had several piles of things that I really should be doing something about, but don’t have the time or energy or resources to address right now. They were stressing me out and annoying me. I dislike clutter, and I particularly hate ugly, messy clutter.

I may not be able to close all those loops immediately, but at least I could gather them all into one place. Now I have a pile of boxes and bags and smaller piles in my bedroom, but I can move through all the other rooms without stuff constantly nagging at me. David Allen would certainly tell me to identify all the tasks in this pile and write them down, but for me this pile acts as a physical to do list. Yeah, you’re supposed to only have one list of tasks and this clearly isn’t it, but it’s good enough for me.

While sorting through the basement this summer, I found an old lava lamp. Unpacked it recently and put it up, thought it might be fun to look at. Maybe swap out the firefly lamp for a while.

The lava lamp turned out to not thrive in the temperatures that are normal for this house. In early September it wasn’t doing too badly, but now the colder it gets, the less fun the lamp is to look at. On the cooler evenings, he lava just doesn’t flow – it melts and sort of undulates, but never bubbles up. The lamp underneath is not hot enough to keep the whole thing warm in our cool living room.

Looking at a sad lava lamp does not make me happy. I think it’s time to re-home it.

Bought a few more houseplants, and pots for them. Plants from IKEA, which has turned out to be a surprisingly good source, and pots from Tradera.

I know you’re “supposed” to put your plants in a pot with drainage, but I don’t like it. I don’t like the look of the terracotta pot + saucer combo, especially with the build-up of minerals that always comes after a few years. That look works out in the garden, but indoors it’s too scruffy for my taste. And a plastic pot inside an outer pot is ugly in a different way.

I just plant the plants directly in what’s supposed to be an outer pot. You’re not supposed to do it that way, but it seems to work for me. I haven’t managed to water anything to death. Just pay attention when watering, and you’re good. In fact, I find it easier to control the amount of water that each plant gets this way. Several plants that I took over the care of and re-potted in the last year are doing better than ever. Actually growing and thriving instead of just surviving. So I’m going to go on doing it my way.

I bought this Philodendron back in January or February. I don’t think its changed in appearance at all since then. The same leaves in the same position, nothing growing, nothing unfurling. I’d almost suspect it was fake, if it wasn’t so un-artificially strange in its shape. It’s like it’s frozen in time.

The internet says it might do better in more humid air, so now it’s moving from the living room window to the bathroom. It remains to be seen if that makes a difference. I take short showers to begin with, and most of them take place at the office after I’ve cycled there. Maybe Ingrid’s and Adrian’s longer showers every other week are enough to matter.

A cat path has appeared between our deck and the gap under the wire fence, where it’s easiest to cross from our yard to the neighbours’.

I sawed off a large dead branch on the apple tree, that had been hanging on only with external support. Then another one. And a third one. And a few smaller ones.

The branch above, all hollow, is not one of those; it is actually green and growing still.

The tree is very old and not doing so well.

We’re barely in the middle of August and it feels like summer is over. Cloudy days and cool evenings. This is probably the last meal we’re going to have outside this season. Shouldn’t August be a summer month still?