Today we made chestnut creatures, as is our tradition. Adrian provided the chestnuts.

Intense concentration.

When we were poking around among the chestnuts in the bowl and commenting on the lack of choice, Adrian went off and came back with his school backpack, which contained at least another kilogram of chestnuts. Small, large, flattish or round – now we have lots of all sorts. They filled not just another bowl, but an entire large dish.

I was glad when Ingrid joined us. She’s been less interested in family activities recently. Teenagers, you know.

The naturalistic ones: camel, rabbit, hedgehog, pigeon, caterpillar.

The more fantastical ones: a sheep that can walk on water; a man with a triple jetpack.

And two space aliens.

The world looks gloomy, but still mostly green.

After a long delay, I’ve finally finished the hole for the plum tree.

This time of the year I just don’t have much energy, so even tasks that don’t take much time tend to not progress. But now I think I’m finally done.

The rock at the bottom really puzzles me. It feels so incredibly smooth that it’s hard to believe it has a natural origin. It feels more like a polished paving stone. But there is a slight curve to it, so I guess it’s not man-made. Weird.

Thick clouds of steam rise from the wooden deck as the morning sun heats it and makes the dew evaporate. I tried to capture it in a photo but the image really doesn’t do it justice.

Ingrid came down crying because of a sudden sharp pain in her foot. A minute later, clear signs of an insect bite appeared.

“Oh right, I’ve been having a lot of wasps in my room for the past few weeks, maybe it was one of those.”

Apparently this hadn’t struck Ingrid as significant enough to bring up, so she’s just been taking the wasps out as and when she spots them.

When Eric opened the side attic behind Ingrid’s desk, he was met by a whole bunch of wasps there. It seems we have a nest somewhere in the walls. Not for the first time – but them coming inside rather than going outside is a first.

The side attic is now closed off and all the gaps hopefully wasp-proofed. We’ll have to wait until the wasps all die for winter and then we can clean them out.

It’s peak chestnut season, and all of Adrian’s pockets and half of his school rucksack are filled with newly picked chestnuts. He just has to pick them all.

I have no more scarf to knit, so I picked up a long-paused crocheting project to fill the gap.

This started out as a travelling project because it’s small and lightweight and easily transportable. If I left it as such, it would take years to finish, now that there is nearly no travelling going on…

It goes fast because there’s so much air in it. It’s mostly holes, after all. I guess it’s time to start planning the next project right away.

We went to see her, one last time, even though we knew she was asleep much of the time and might not even wake up to notice our presence.

It felt oddly intimate to visit someone who is asleep.

She was there, and yet it was almost not her any more. She has always been alive and warm-hearted and vivacious, and this person here is so emphatically not, so how can it be her? This person was closer to being dead than to being her.

When we thought she had months to live, it was only weeks. When we thought it was days, it was just hours.

She died a few hours after we left. It does not seem real.

A raindrop, on a sweet pea tendril.

Someone close to us is dying, and her death is approaching much closer than I had realized even just a few weeks ago. And I haven’t seen her since the beginning of the year because of the damn virus.