Halifax here I come.

I am preparing for a big trip - on Tuesday I go to Halifax Nova Scotia, leaving my tenants to guard the house and pick the last of the cherry tomatoes. It will be an important trip for the launch of the memoir that is set partly in Halifax, where I spent 13 of the first 16 years of my life. I'm speaking at an assembly at the Halifax Grammar School in the morning of Oct. 1, and speaking again at the book launch there at 6 that evening.

HGS, as I've written before, was founded by my father in 1958 so my brother would get the best education; I went there for a year in 1965 when they started accepting girls, which is dealt with in the book. But HGS eventually bought the nearby public school Tower Road, where I went from ages 8 to 10 - Grades 4, 5 and 6 - and that's where these events will be held. Such echoes. Plus I will be seeing lots of old friends of mine and my parents. It will be a vital trip into my own long distant past in a historic city on the edge of the ocean. I can't wait.

It is a spectacular Sunday in downtown Toronto, and so incredibly quiet. I was going to go for a bike ride down to the lake, but could not leave home on such a perfect day, so instead I've got a load of laundry hanging outside in the hot sun and just spent an hour weeding the garden. My back hurts, but how good that feels - begone bloody clover and mint, ye gods the amount of mint, and the clumps of weedy violets. Filled one large garbage bin with weeds and have only tackled around the veggie garden. Oh I did let the garden go this summer. Mea culpa.

My carrots are minuscule, none more than two inches long, most about one inch. Did I buy midget carrot plants by mistake or did I do something wrong? Planted too close together? Any advice?

Though the bougainvillea is magnificent and the gardenia full of buds - hope springs eternal - it makes me sad to see the rest of the garden shutting down, the flowers dying, leaves turning yellow and brown and shrivelling. I am grateful, though, for seasons. With seasons comes gratefulness - for the life that begins again each year, flourishes, fades and dies. The natural cycle of things for plants, for animals, for us.

Onward.