Summer and birthdays

Very busy these weeks.
Amsterdam buzzing with life: tourists, and excellent films, not to mention fine museum exhibitions.
I am becoming increasingly vegetarian and make superb thick and nourishing soups.

This one is basically pumpkin, but of course a secret recipe!
Often towards the end of the day the sun appears, creating long shadows across the water and between the thin bricks of the canal houses. Most photogenic.

 And here's a watery view:

I love this one: everything slightly askew; and the lamppost really is off the vertical. A drunken moment...
It's beginning to feel as if summer's drawing to an end. Many yellowing leaves (because of the long drought), the grass faded and the juvenile seagulls now white-winged.
This week I celebrate my 75th birthday. Have asked friends and neighbours though many people still away on holiday.
David has a few hours ago arrived in the huge harbour of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France.

I am continually amazed (and delighted) by how quiet it is in my street. Probably because it's not a through-way. And many neighbours are abroad.
Here it is on a sunny morning.

My house halfway down on the left