The September Pages (2025)
things I saw, drew and thought about this month
Anyone who has been reading my journal posts, or who knows me in real life, knows that I am a nerd for autumn. It does something invigorating to me, sets my senses to alert, my fluffy fox ears point up and I sniff the air. The edge of the wind (you know, how the wind has a wee edge to it in September, a briskness even in the sunshine, but only on the outside edge) catches my nose. I sneeze (I obviously have the first cold of the season). Autumn is here! I could draw and make all day long in the autumn and never run out of enthusiasm. I know it is a season of retracting and preserving and dying-away, but my creative self is bursting with enthusiasm.
Except this year, it has taken me a little time to trust the arrival of autumn. With all the heat and droughts over the summer, the browning edges of leaves and first leaves floating to the ground* didn’t feel exciting, they felt slightly sinister. It led me to reflect that my journals recording all the seasonal shifts might actually have a part to play as we navigate this new era of climate change (what part, I don’t know).
[* Trix is convinced that leaves floating to the ground are dying butterflies and there’s no telling her otherwise]
However, around about the equinox, the air was so convincingly autumnal, and the toadstools so delightfully obvious, and the conkers so wonderfully shiny, that I had no choice but to deep dive into autumn joy. Here are my pages from September:
1.
Early September, painting in the garden with Trix. While we’d been out (at the Hugo Burge Foundation Open Studios, highly recommend) Ross had lit a bonfire at the back of the garden. Everything was lovely and smoky, with that edge of danger that a fire brings. Cosmos and sweet peas still flowering, sunflowers not out yet, nasturtiums in recovery from a heavy caterpillaring in August. Two weeks of term done and a sobering reminder of how bad I am at doing the same thing every day. The school run! So many more years of it lie ahead! I was remembering when I used to be employed in a real job, a job I actually quite liked, that getting up in the morning and getting to work felt impossibly awful. I felt like I was dragging myself through tar to get moving. I used to worry about the rest of my working life beginning every day with the same feeling. Then I became self-employed and realised that I need variety to keep my energy up. The school run isn’t quite so bad as the 9-5, but ugh, it is a drag. Although, saying that, I do like thinking about all these families all directing themselves at the same grid point. Everyone dealing with their own stuff, everyone facing ups and downs, but packing school bags and putting on coats and all heading to the same spot on the map. Like a giant muscle contracting, maybe a uterus.
2. magpie
we’ve been semi-regularly seeing a pair of magpies at the back of the garden, and along the roadside while driving around the central Borders. When we were growing up, there were no magpies in the Borders. We’d see them north of Soutra when we went up to Edinburgh, or down toward Carlisle, but the Borders seemed to be a magpie-free zone. I remember when I was quite young I got sent on a Brownie Camp to Pyatshaw (near Lauder) [not relevant to the story, but I was incredibly homesick and got sent home after one long night]. A scholarly friend of my dad’s gave me an article to read about the history of Pyatshaw. I don’t remember much of the contents except that in old Scots a Pyat is a magpie. The place name, Pyatshaw, seemed to evidence that magpies once abounded in the Borders. They were shot by gamekeepers because they raid nests and interrupt the breeding of birds for game, it seemed. Do gamekeepers still shoot magpies? Does anyone know? Anyway, the magpies are back. Hide your eggs and your treasures.
3.
a no-school Friday stop-off at Woodside Garden Centre to buy spring bulbs (I obviously haven’t planted any of them yet). There was a robin on a picnic bench eating a cheese scone. We were delighted by it.
4.
A day-trip to Edinburgh included a visit to the Andy Goldsworthy 50 Years exhibition at the RSA. I’ve been an Andy Goldsworthy fan since I was at college when I was 16. I loved the exhibition, the combination of the control and the wildness really appeals to me, and I enjoy how rooted he is in his landscape. It was fun to talk with the kids about how art can be made from sheeps’ poo or hare’s blood or barbed wire. There was something bizarre, though, about being in a building in the centre of a city, looking at work about engaging with the elements, having to ask my 3-year old not to touch that stick or pull that leaf or stand on that carpet-made-of-sheeps-wool. Humans are strange, aren’t we? I had a sudden yearning to actually just be in the woods where we live. But overall, I loved it, and I bought this postcard of one of the first images I saw of Goldsworthy back when I was an impressionable youth.
Also, conkers that look like bulging eyes and a nose. Accidental composition but now I can’t unsee it.
5. hands (my sister’s) holding conkers
I had forgotten how much this woman loves conkers! Ruth came to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon with us, and we burst out the house in a dry spell. We went to the chestnut tree in the woods, on the left fork toward Kingfisher Corner. Now, the kids love finding conkers, don’t get me wrong, but Ruth REALLY loves finding conkers. She’ll risk a fall into those vicious September nettles to get a really big cheggie. We found loads of doublers and even a tripler or two. Everyone returned home with pockets and fists stuffed full.
I love having a single smooth conker in my pocket to roll in my palm (especially in the pocket of a fleece: soft and fluffy next to hard and smooth). Although God forbid you jam your hand into a pocket that contains the spiky shell of a chestnut! Yowch!
And that, my friends, was September! I launched the 2026 calendars at the start of the month and have been happily stuffing them into envelopes ever since. It has been so lovely to see all the names of good customers again – they feel like old friends to me. Thank you to everyone who has ordered this month. You are the reason my drawings can support my little family, and I am so grateful.
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