My avocado has grown this year: not yet producing fruit, but who knows. I had it in the garden during Summer with some of my other potted plants and more or less forgot it. I planted the stone from a fruit two years . The new leaves that appear are not bigger. I have now moved it to a place in front of the kitchen so that I can keep my eye on it. When the colder weather arrives, especially at night the temperatures drop, it will then have a winter place inside. Mr. Swiss was astonished to see that I actually have two avocado plants. I planted a second stone last year, and that too has survived, although not as tall as this one.

It was quite exhausting to shift my plants to a safe place to prepared them for the colder temperatures, but now they are ready for the inside. I also have my amaryllis from last year, which was a wonderful plant.

I decided it was worth a trial to keep it and let it flower again this year, so after a jogging tour on Internet, I found instructions on how to do it. The person that wrote the instructions had about 10 of these plants that he had kept year after year. It has now been sitting in a pot outside, being fed with fertiliser and only producing leaves. The leaves have now disappeared, except for a small remant in the middle of the pot and it looks like it is still alive. I do not know what is happening in the bulb, but all going well there should be something ready to grow again this year. I will have to refresh the insructions, but I think the idea is now to ignore it, let it dry out a bit and begin to give it water again towards the end of the year. They are not so expensive to buy, and if it does not look like it will succeed I can always buy a new one.

My poinsettia has also survived the summer outside, as well as the Christmas cactus, so I am ready to go.

Our troop of builders are now slowly dwindling and we are left with a stone cutter, who is still busy shaping the stones to size and annoying everyone with the noise. The machine has been depositied next to my neighbour’s garden, who is quite annoyed with the noise (arn’t we all). He now realised that the grinding wheel was completely blunt and instructed the worker to replace it with a new one. Since then it no longer makes such an annoying noise, but still makes a noise. There is one man fiddling around with something outside one of our windows, but perhaps he is bored and no longer has a target in his building life. It can only now get better and we are waiting for the invasion of the painters and eventual removal of the scaffolding, when we will clap our hands and do a happy dance.

Time to go shopping again today. We had to revise our shopping list system. What is the point of having a list when you forget to write what you need? Yes we are becoming lazy and forgetful in our golden oldie years. I will not go into details, it could become embarrassing, but things are not so well organised as they should be. If one of us forgets, it is no problem, but when we both forget it could get very uncomfortable. As soon as we think of something it will be written on the list for both of us to see on the cloud. There is no point in writing it on paper, because I can no longer write, my hands do not do what I want them to (they prefer a keyboard), and I have never been able to read Mr. Swiss handwriting.

In the meanwhile a fly has again arrived. He probably want to partake in my breakfast bread crumbs remainders. It is that time of the year for all sorts of insects searching for a home to spend the winter. Where do the flies go in winter is the question. I always imagined small space ships arriving and taking them back to Planet Fly for the Winter holidays. They survive and return again next Spring – who knows?

Have fun and enjoy the day and above all keep safe.