Mmm, autumn always seems like the start of the gardeners year - new bulbs, lots of pruning, cuttings for overwintering, harvest, ladling on compost and planting the new bare root fruits, roses and shrubs. After a truly bizarre rainless summer, the allotment has turned sere and brown much earlier than usual. Rudbeckias, dahlias and heleniums and asters had an attenuated show - I always struggle with these prairie type beauties on my sandy soil but one must have them. This year, not even emergency hosing was going to prolong the luminous late summer show of golds, bronzes and purples so I turned my face to the gravel garden which never fails to thrive. Melissa, how I love spanish broom - yep, Spartium junceum can be a thug but what a gorgeous fragrant and elegant one. They twist and bend, making fantastically gnarly shapes and grow huge and fat in East Anglia. Cytisus also grows to shocking tree size, as does Tamarix. Desperate savage pruning has been done. even though the shrubs in question are less than 6 years old, they are eating the shed. A glorious stipa gigantea, planted so carefully to filter the low evening sun, has been overshadowed one one side and totally mugged by a giant acanthus on the other. In truth, the entire gravel garden has to be redone, lifting the remnants of the old membrane (which utterly failed to prevent the millions of verbena, centranthus, ox-eye daisies, althea and eryngiums from seeding with total abandon) and replacing plants which should never have been placed there (legion - Dieramas, Schizostylus, echinaceas - embarrassing how clueless I was to plant these moisture lovers in gravel!!!)Then there are the plants which clearly love it but are far too keen - helianthemums, nepetas, salvias, hebes - small cushions are ground swallowing mounds. Apart from lots of lavender - I have hedges of L Hidcote - the deepest blue, I do not have as many silver plants as I would like. A colony of pulsatilla does well with summer silky seedheads. Santolina and a lone artemisia (Powis Castle - another huge thing). Would like to try astelia and also celmisias. A plant grown much by Ingrid, and a revelation to me, was Limonium - violetta, I have and it looks terrific with eryngiums and stipa tenuissima. Stachys or Phlomis have, so far, failed to touch my heart and I have done verbascums to death. Still throwing out flowers is the modest Zauschneria, looking good with the last of the escholzias, Salvia greggii and microphylla are flowering profusely and unstoppable. Also, pushing out another cycle of flowers - a lovelu silver leafed mound of erodium chrysantha (might be good for you, Melissa, it is a lovely thing). However, much of this is happening out of my sight since I am woefully stuck at home in a kitchen which resembles Entebbe. A simple flooring job turned into armageddon - the massively heavy cast-iron and enamel sink is upside down on the sofa, the old washing machine has been drug to the tip and a new (to me) one has arrived - although the sink issue means it is still in the middle of the kitchen. Am running out of knickers and socks - may have to be a slut and turn them inside out since the whole water system is now only usable with a lot of fiddling about with stopcocks. In a moment of frenzy, I thought we may as well go the whole way and ripped off great swathes of old painted wallpaper - which of course, came off really easily....on one wall - the rest seems as though it was cemented in position. The ingrates (offspring) have absented themselves for large amounts of time yet still manage to materialise at sensitive (shouty, sweary) moments and chip in with ludicrous suggestions (we could put speakers in the new sink cupboards, why don't we have an indoor hammock?)Estimates of finishing time have gone from 'around a week' to 'in time for Christmas'. We are eating a lot of 'bread based snacks' - although the rate of jam consumption is worrying as I was definately slack this year, using the virusey raspberries as an excuse to cut down on all the 'earth mother' nonsense I had somehow got myself into(what was I thinking?) May be forced onto chocolate spread - sweetheart can have marmalade (shudder). Even so, it has been a spectacular tomato year (no rain - no blight)- have had kilos and kilos from 40 plants. I now have wrists of iron from poking hundreds of tomatoes through a sieve. The first bareroots will be arriving soon so I will have every reason to flee the kitchen chaos.

Hope you are doing well. When you do talk to your son again, make sure you tell him you love him and are concerned about him. Sometimes we forget to state the obvious and sometimes folks really need to hear it. That may be especially true of someone who seems like he is critical and needing a lot of attention. I wouldn't press the issue, you buy might inquire about things outside the family -- work, friends, the world in general. Maybe have a philosophical discussion (if that works with you and your DS) about life -- hopes, dreams, worries, and try to make it about him and the world, not him and family. Maybe there's a conection? If he is an engineer and perfectionist, could there be things at work that are beyound his control that are causing stress that doesn't have another outlet -- like kids who stress at school and explode on their parents about any little thing when they get home, just a grown up version. Are there any fears about layoffs? Is he not happy with the work he's doing? Anything he might be afraid of? Is he the sole bread winner? Is that causing him a lot of stress - especially if he's worried about his job or feeling unsatisfied in his career. Maybe focussing on him a bit will let him open up and express some things that might help resolve some tension. May or may not solve the relationship, but the underlying issue here is that you are concerned about your son. You don't feel like he is acting like himself and that is causing other issues. Again, let him know you love him and you are concerned about him. Sounds like he has seen a doctor, but that doesn't rule out any medical issues. Doctors only know what they see and what they are told in a short window of time. You know what was reviewed loooked fine. That's a snapshot. If the doctor isn't told more, they don't know to look deeper. I've never known a doctor to look for any mental issues if they weren't pressing questions. Questions most folks would rather avoid. Just keep that in the back of your mind. Take care of yourself, and I wish you all the best.

Bossy and everyone in the storm area: Thank you for your updates.....I know ya'll aren't fake news. What has been different for me and hubby this time.... we are both retired ( sometimes retarded ) and have been saturated with the news coverage. Usually, we are both working and unable to leave our jobs during disasters. ( nurse and police officer). I couldn't sleep last nite and was channel surfing the news outlets. FINALLY.....on CNN, some reporter struck her microphone in this poor woman's face who had just arrived at a shelter. You could see the water dripping off her, the baby she was holding and a 3-4 yr old holding her other hand. The CNN female reporter would not give up.... ". How are you handleing this? Who rescued you? Did you lose everything you owned?" The poor woman just lost it.... she strated screaming at the reporter: " how dare you stick that microphone in my face?? Can't you see see how we are doing?!?! My children are soaking wet, we are hungry, but thank God we are here now. You are heartless and need to stick that microphone up your a*#". The shelter broke out in applause for this poor woman. I realize the news folks are doing their jobs, but some of the questions they are asking these poor, hurt, devastated victims is beyond humane. Please forgive my soapbox, but I am just hurting for the entire area. My brother in Lake Charles is ok so far.. please continue to keep us posted. Our prayers are with all of you. margee

It's frustrating to me as a teacher that we are not doing more to make schools safe and prepared to meet this challenge and the next one that comes along. People need socialization, which is why we should have right from the get-go jumped on this like General Marshall did on the reconstruction of Europe after WWII. They knew if they didn't act at a massive scale, the misery of the war would undermine democracy and we'd just be back where it all started in another 30 years. I think its the same with this virus, infectious diseases are going to make a comeback, it has been predicted for decades by scientists aware of how the conditions present in the world would inevitably lead to that. I'm sure you all have concerns about your local schools, but mine were in tough shape even before this. In some cases, we teachers just make do no matter what, but now that our lives are at risk, it's sort of at the breaking point. So many teachers I knew were getting out of the profession even before this, due to lack of community support. Some schools will manage this better than others, and the weakest schools will of course have the most trouble, just as some people will have a lot of trouble surviving the virus while others not so much . . . Edited to add that I wish I could get my husband involved in the "pretend" or even real shopping for a truck to pull a camper. He keeps talking about it but is hesitant to do it due to the financial uncertainty . . .