Back To Work.

The sun was back again today which made the start of a new term a bit more bearable. The children don't start until tomorrow but we had to attend an all day course on autism. This was held at a school in town and there were many familiar faces from other schools at the course. We see a lot more children with autism in school these days either because more children have it or because the number of places in special schools or units has been drastically cut. (Nothing to do with saving money of course.) It was very informative and we also covered sensory processing disorder. Hopefully we will be able to understand the needs of our children better and make school an easier experience for them. (As a prelude to talking about non-verbal communication we were shown this youtube clip of twin toddlers which was hilarious.)

We kept our bring-and-share lunch down to half an hour so that we finished at 2.30. Back home there was the rest of a sunny afternoon for working out in the garden. I'd had an early morning go with the pressure washer and fitted in 2 more sessions this afternoon. In between I picked a sunny spot in the scree garden and started on the task of clearing leaves and weeds from amongst the stones. I also cut back the dry flower stalks on the lavender bushes. Initially I carefully cut them in 1's and 2's but by the end I was just grabbing a handful, bending them to snap the dry stalks. 

While there is still lots of yellow in the garden with the primroses covering almost half of the bank by the drive pink is making appearance. The flowering currant was first closely followed by the vivid pom-poms of Rubus Spectabilis.  

This is my only bergenia flower.