Last night was the full Harvest Moon.
I made a big moussaka today and will freeze it in portions for almost instant dinners on the nights I don’ t feel like cooking.
Another gloriously pink-becoming-orange-becoming-fiery sunset and all within moments.
The International Day of Peace 2026 is observed on September 21, 2026, with the official United Nations theme “Invest in Peace – For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day”.
Fabulous bright red berries on the Cotoneaster Horizontalis
First enormous leek from the garden, used in the Chicken, Mushroom and Leek Pie, below
Pastry cooked while filling was being made halved the prep time –Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â crisp and crunchy all round, not soggy where it had touched the filling!
The birthday, for which I made the special cake yesterday, was celebrated in style! Here we have just finished singing Happy Birthday to Matty, one of the directors of the project. He loved the cake and said the lemon drizzle on top ‘shone like diamonds in the sunshine.’
We also had a special and very delicious lunch made by one of the volunteers, Lemon Chickpea Soup, using a recipe from rainbowplantlife.com
We’ve had a new bright and lovely mural painted near the entrance, artist Omi O’Connell. 
At the local plant nursery today there was a very friendly robin.
I loved the colour of these leaves but didn’t take note of what the plant was. 
I’ve made a special cake for Community Roots tomorrow as a birthday is being celebrated.
Lemon Victoria Sponge with a Lemon Drizzle Topping
Another cracker of a day, this time with our wonderful Roots community and many, many visitors celebrating the harvest, especially of Squash. Click on any of the photos for a bigger version.
The Welcome table at the gate
We used a human chain of all the people to bring the squash in for drying before storage. The children each took a parent onto the squash patch and the harvesting began in earnest. Each beautiful vegetable was handed around the chain and put on the racks to ripen off.
A delicious lunch was made for every volunteer, a very tasty tomato sauce with spaghetti.
There were other activities for children including the Gratitude Tree which was a delight.
Lastly there was a parade around the garden led by the trio Jaclarabag with such verve that got everyone dancing at the end of the walk.
And tonight we are just home from a brilliant evening at The Redruth Comedy Club where Mark Steele and Marcus Brigstock kept us laughing all evening.
Waiting by the Penryn RIver before going into choir this morning, the reflections of the masts in the still water were lovely.
It was interesting how different the light was looking the other way up the river towards Falmouth just a few moments later.
I collected up the last of our tomatoes today and roasted them prior to making Roasted Tomato Sauce to go into the freezer for some tomatoey pasta reminiscent of summer in the darker months.
Our lovely neighbour who takes my cakes to the market each month, made a special sign for it on the market stall. 
There was a new stall at the market, a French/Italian patisserie, Nougatine, and, my goodness, the Lemon Tarts were absolutely the best I have ever tasted.
The sky this evening was beautiful. 
P.S. The exhibition at Truro Cathedral ends on October 5th.
It’s time for this month’s Happiness calendar.
I made a scrumptious Lemon Victoria Sponge cake for the volunteers today and it went down a storm. It was rather delicious!
We have a wonderful carrot harvesting team as I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when I used some of the carrots for the following week’s cake. We have a bunch of youngsters from toddler to nearly 9 years old who are superb at pulling up the carrots! All the parents gave permission for the photos to be used here
It’s been a busy morning harvesting – sweetcorn and tomatoes.
We had freshly boiled and buttered sweetcorn for lunch and I cooked four more cobs and cut off the corn to freeze. There’ll be more for lunch tomorrow.
The black tomatoes from one plant I have today made into a rich tomato chutney with a hint of cardamom. It’s delicious.
500g tomatoes made two and a half little jars of chutney
This afternoon one of my choirs, The Suitcase Singers, had our last gig of the summer at The Meudon Hotel.
Looking from the dining room down the garden.
In 2018 I was the Humanist Celbrant at a delightful wedding in the gardens of the Meudon Hotel.
Our eldest daughter came today to help my lovely Mr S move our very heavy Finger Labyrinth sculpture a few feet. It has been tricky mowing around it so now it’s at the edge of a flower bed and a new lawn will be sown where it was. It looks much better where it is now.
My next job will be to find plants to grow at the base that won’t grow too high to obscure the carved words. I shall start researching an evergreen, low growing shrub that has flowers, maybe scent……
Ars brevis vita longa
Amor vincit omnia
Blue skies and a temperature of 21C – perfect!
Chicken, leek and bacon pie
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