Took a half-day off work to rake the leaves in the garden. A sunny, dry, mostly windless day – who knows when we’ll next get one of these in November. Plus I have a bit of a deadline, in that the garden waste bins only get emptied for another week or so.

The leaves on the deck were crunchy and photogenic, but everywhere else they were wet and gluey. Windproof, but wet and unpleasant to handle. I really would have liked to do this earlier, but this Saturday we had the birthday party, the Sunday was rainy, and there was a storm the weekend before that, and the week before that the leaves were still on the trees. Hence me taking time off work now.