Tempus fugit

Talk about time flying, my tempus has been fugiting along at a cracking pace lately. Here it is the middle of August and not a sausage from me on this blog this month, until now. I have many excellent travel-planning reasons for being a bit distracted at the moment, but I thought it would actually be good for a moment to stop, hit the metaphorical 'Pause' button on life (that we all wish we could actually possess – wouldn't that be cool), and do a little update on what's happening here.

Great news, my plan with the mirror at the back of the garden is working. Back in March this year I attached a mirror to the shed and blogged about it all here. Well.... traa daaa!

Just like the plan promised, when you step out the back door and look down the path to the shed, the garden seems a tiny bit bigger and more colourful, thanks to the mirror picking up the potted cumquats in the distance, the lettuce and succulents in the middle ground, and the cheery cinerarias in the background.

Hardly my favourite flower colours, but good old cinerarias deserve a bit of praise for putting on a cheery flower show while spending most of the winter in the shade. Can't be choosy about colours when hardly anything will flower in that spot, at that time of year.

So it's lovely to have a little garden design plan come off, and in the summer I'll plant something equally floriferous and cheerful as the cinerarias to keep the colourful reflections going.

And now, just a quick update on those other plans which have been distracting both Pammy and I lately. Travel! It's less than a month to go now before we head off on our road-trip odyssey across the United States.

We've booked all our flights, the rent-a-car, the major bits of accommodation (Hawaii, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco), and we have also attended to two thousand other little planning details, which leaves us with only another nine hundred or so to go. We have a house sitter organised, expert garden waterers (Katarina and Nick from next door) lined up and raring to go, I've bought a new laptop so I can blog my way across the country, and now all we have to do is pack up and get to the airport on time.

I'll keep on updating the blog here while we're on the road, but before I head off could I again say thanks to all the lovely people who have suggested gardens to visit in the USA and given us so many handy travel tips, both here on the blog and also via email. It's much appreciated.