Ready for the slush pile

The Virginia Creeper on the side of our house turns colour so quickly before falling that if you blink you've missed it. I didn't travel far for this shot on one of those drizzly, overcast days.

Thank you for the kind words yesterday, particularly those who read the poem and left such encouraging remarks. It's sod's law that the light for leaf shots was so dismal today when it had been so beautiful the day before. But I couldn't blip any of my leaves from that session.

Another fustrating day of grappling with publishing submissions. The advice they give on some agents' sites is unbelievable. One explained in great detail what it wanted and how it wanted it to be presented and mailed etc. Then it said that, without an introduction from a mutual contact or friend, a manuscript was unlikely to be taken from its slush pile and read. And these are the agents, before a book even gets to a publishing house where they have their own slush piles.

"Slush pile" is a hateful term.