Scottish September

Our summer would not have been complete without a visit to the Scottish Highland Games over Labor Day weekend. It was a visit to those games 14 years ago that resulted in me winning the I-wish-I-could-play-the-harp contest whereby I beat a dozen or so other contestants with my rave rendition of "Morning is Broken" (it was for people who'd never played the harp before) and with my victory got a free loaner harp for a year which started me to learning how to play this fascinating instrument. Sadly, I hardly play at all these days; a situation that must be rectified somehow. Veeka does not have the concentration to learn and I no longer have the reasons to play that I used to. Weekly lessons, concerts with other harpists and competitions kept me practicing like crazy each week for many years. The height of it all was attending an international harp convention in Edinburgh, Scotland in the spring of 2001.
Anyway, Veeka, her uncle Rob and her mommy went to this year's festival where the sunny, breezy weather was so beautiful, it hurt. The festivities were marred a bit by Veeka's habit of wandering off whereby I and Rob spent an anxious half hour searching for her. She had wandered into some kind of tower, the little minx. And then, after a friend gave her a Scottish frisbee, she promptly lost it.
The photo shows Veeka and her uncle sunning themselves in the back yard as temps are still in the 90s during the day. But the nights have cooled down quite a bit now and little pumpkins are starting to pop out in my garden.