Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Despite the warm weather we have been having lately, the early signs of autumn are sneaking up on us. Little by little, my bonsai are getting ready for their winter sleep and their leaves are gradually beginning to change colour as they start to close down. Imperceptibly at first, then some of them will turn a fiery red before shedding their tiny leaves like so much confetti.
A wonderful sight, but a little sad at the same time, and I always miss seeing them in leaf.

It reminds me more poignantly that I am approaching my own autumn (and hopefully I won’t turn scarlet!) emphasised mainly by the fact that I am not at my best this week. Probably doing too much…for at my age you are supposed to be taking it a little easier, but that’s easier said than done when you have a mountain of jobs piling up in front of you!

Despite the workload, I have been doing a fair bit of gazing out my window this week (searching for inspiration, or at least that’s my excuse!) and just love the way Mother Nature goes about her business, come hell or high water. Maybe we could all learn from her example, especially me.
But I’m afraid it is all too easy for me to find excuses for not doing what I ought. I find myself constantly using my age as the perfect excuse and I really must stop doing that, it’s really pathetic and doesn’t match how I have lived my life up until now.
The only thing I have always known for sure, is that you can do anything, provided you want to enough. So as long as I am still breathing, I should be able to just get on with it!
It is easy to think of autumn as the end of things, when in fact it is just part of the sequence. A resting time to reflect on how much better and brighter next spring will be. And we need that slowing down, as working flat out all the time is unsustainable. We need to look back at the past year and really see what worked and what didn’t.

You know what I mean, all those things you thought were important at the time, but turned out not to be. I have learnt such a lot this year, but the fact that I am still making colossal mistakes only proves to me that there is so much more to learn and to do.
It would be easy to mimic the seasons, shut down and hibernate until spring arrives; and I must admit that sounds incredibly tempting…
But I have PayBack to finish, Anita’s busily scribbling away, so lots of editing there. I also have a pile of notes to wade through. Some to digest, others to discard; time to clear the decks and really get organised. So many possibilities just waiting to be discovered…

In addition, a huge thank you to all those of you who have helped us this year, you know who you are…