Packing for my (by now annual) autumn hike. For once I’ve started packing in good time – I’m leaving tomorrow evening.

Layers and layers of duplicate stitch keep this pair of socks going.

I finally have a plum tree! I’ve been looking for one for a year already, but the kind I wanted has been sold out everywhere.

Here, finally, is a Reine Claude d’Oullins on a dwarf Pixy stock. Now – fingers crossed – I hope I can keep it alive.

I was working in the garden, planting things, and realized that I needed to buy more soil. Grabbed the car keys and drove to the nearest Plantagen without further thought.

It only took me 5 minutes of driving to realize what a bad idea this was. Rubber boots are awful for driving. The soles are so thick and I can’t feel the pedals properly. I stalled the engine twice on my way there because I had apparently released the clutch further than I thought. And the top edge of the boots got caught on the edge of the seat. Eugh.

I’ve managed to pound into my head the learning that driving in hiking boots is a terrible, horrible, very bad idea. Maybe I can learn to add rubber boots to that rule.

No photo today so here’s another one from yesterday. I kept up with my habit of daily energetic walks. It was harder in the city than in Spånga because there are street crossings and cars and people and all sorts of other complications everywhere. I have to actually watch where I’m going!

This lovely staircase is Malmskillnadstrappan which I find really cool. It’s much wider at the bottom than at the top, so looking up it seems to go on forever. Looking down from the top, it looks to be the same width all the way, which somehow feels surprisingly normal even though it shouldn’t.

Went to the office today. It was fun to see my colleagues. Commuting by train (because I needed to be there early) was about as boring as I remembered. And the pavements in the city were full of scooters.

Adrian is practising multiplication. Not just simple times tables anymore – now one of the terms is a double-digit number, so it’s two for one and some addition and memory training as well.

I make up the problems for him by randomly sprinkling numbers on the page. I usually skip one (too easy) and start at two. Work my way from two to nine and put each number on a random line in the first position, and repeat that until there’s a number on each line. Three cycles gives me 24 lines which is roughly what I can fit on a normal page of squared paper. Then put a multiplication sign on each line. Then do three cycles from two to nine again for the first digit of the second term, and then the same again for the second digit. Voila – random maths problems on demand.

Chestnuts are kind of weird. They’re so weirdly large and fleshy to begin with. And so weirdly smooth inside, as if they were man-made and polished, but thorny on the outside.

It’s chestnut season. Chestnuts are large and slippery and I actually need to look out for them if I don’t want to twist my ankle.

I’m happy that I’ve managed to keep up with my daily walks for exercise.