I think there’s a couple of bottles of Colpasso in the cellar. It’s time to take inventory and identify what will need drinking soon; last month I found a 2014 Chardonnay that tasted of raisins.

When Edmund died, the wine rack (200 sections of terra-cotta drainage pipe stacked against the foundation) contained more than 150 bottles. Nearly two years later, I’m down to about 120 — and I’ve taken wine everywhere I’ve been invited in the interim. I bought some prosecco a couple of weeks ago to make Aperol spritz for the rellies, but I think that’s been my only wine purchase.

Yesterday I vacuumed, dusted and mopped everything on the ground floor of the house, removing prodigious quantities of cat hair, and today I shall attack the upstairs. It’s time to deal with the warren of dust bunnies under my bed, not to speak of 13 open bookcases and three Oriental carpets. The toilets and sinks are clean; it’s just everything else.

As the summer wanes, the angle of the sun has changed enough that I have to move several large houseplants to keep them out of direct glare. One in particular — a bushy Maranta leuconeura — has been so happy in the library that it doubled its spread during the summer and now looks as if it needs a room of its own.