November again already yet

It's the time of year when we can't do a lot in the garden except look through rain-streaked windows at what remains in flower.  We still have flowers on quite a few roses, although the foliage has largely succumbed to black spot.  Must Try Harder next year.  Hypericums are flowering well, as are the good old penstemons - except for one which mysteriously turned its toes up in the summer.  A number of over-wintered fuchsias are still flowering, but will soon be cut down by the frosts.  A little neapolitan cyclamen that I liberated from Jane's garden before she moved (at her invitation, I emphasise) is flowering steadily.  The red stems of the dogwoods are now completely denuded of leaves, and the foliage of the iris sibiricas has, I suppose, a certain autumnal charm.  The consummately boring viburnum tinus is putting up a few blossoms, doubtless in an attempt to divert me from my plan to grub it out.  We have a good crop of berries on a pyracantha at the top of the garden.  The blackbirds obviously haven't noticed - I watched from my study window years ago back at Smith Towers as they stripped a neighbour's pyracantha of berries over the space of just a few days.

Chair, 2007

The survivor of a pair of dining chairs is in the back of the car awaiting my next trip to the tip.  I bought them nearly ten years ago from a charity shop, and re-upholstered them at a class.  They were very comfortable, as I'd webbed and sprung each with no fewer than nine springs.  The underpinnings of the upholstery had held up well (even though I resisted my teacher's suggestion that I star-lash them, ie tie the springs down not only fore and aft and side to side, but across the two diagonals as well).  As it turns out, that would have been a waste of effort: the frames were of very brittle, splintery wood, and the last straw for each chair came when a castor sheared off.  The cover on the survivor had got very grubby meanwhile, and the joints between the seat and the back had given, despite my efforts to fix them before upholstering: they were drilled and dowelled, rather than mortice and tenon: the cheap mass-production approach.

Alas, my upholstering days are over, I think: the old hands were

Chair, 2005

already protesting even back then at some of the quite strenuous tasks involved.  If I could find more of the little spade-back chairs I might have a crack at restoring them.  They are altogether more solid, though they too are getting grubby. I shall have a go at them with the steamer and see if I can get a year or two more out of them.

Of other ancient chairs on the premises, the Orkney chair has acquired a new purpose.  With a few added cushions, it's about the right height for one of my three-times-a-day physiotherapy exercises.  It's a fine piece of work, made out of oak from wrecked ships, with straw base and back.  It came from Orkney to the neighbouring island of Great Britain, as they say up there, about a century ago when a relative of ours married an Orcadian.  An occasional visitor with replacement knee joints makes a beeline for it every time she visits.

I still await news from VW, and presume they are still developing a fix for the scandalous 'defeat device', a software trick to sense when the car's emissions were being tested so as to give an unrepresentatively low reading.  I had been planning to change cars, but will have for the time being to sit on my hands rather than suffer the likely collapse in its resale value. I have in the meantime signalled an interest in joining in one of the class actions.  With eleven million owners - including many litigious Americans and their regulators - no doubt entertaining similar thoughts, I wouldn't care to be a VW shareholder in the short term.