An afternoon in the garden

This last week has been so warm and sunny that we've spent almost all our time outside. This afternoon I took my paints into the gazebo and completed the picture above which I think will make a great postcard, and possibly a patch for a canvas bag. I'm off to a number of craft fairs over the summer months, so I need some images that will appeal to visitors to the area, and hopefully this will be popular.

Of course Ben has been very bored by all the painting and gardening - here he has collapsed in a stupor of boredom. But I told him the beach wouldn't be nearly so much fun if he spent all his time there. I don't think he believed me though. So he decided if he couldn't be digging in sand, then he'd dig up the borders instead. Check out the muddy nose below!!

I was given a couple of tomato plants by Nick from next door, and I've planted them in an old wooden apple crate. It's hard to believe that one day they'll reach nearly to the top of the canes and that I'll be picking my own salads before long. I'm also planning to put in some aubergine and pepper plants, it'll be very Mediterranean in my courtyard!

The lanes here are at their best now I think. They're smothered with bluebells and pink campion, with cow parsley frothing in wild abandon. Some of the wider and sunnier verges are even studded with wild orchids. I have been told that they're a very common kind, but then that doesn't make them any less attractive. I often think that the summer visitors miss our countryside at its best, since by late July and August the wild flowers are mostly over and everywhere is beginning to look tired and dusty. At this time of year I often think of the poem "Lanes in Summer" by Malcolm Hemphrey which I learned as a child...

I love the little winding lanes,

In the sweet days when summer reigns;

The eglantine and hawkweed's plume;

The dog-rose and the bramble bloom,

Like stars from heaven gone astray;

The fragrant scent of new-mown hay;

The poppies in the green-aisled wheat;

The bees that find the clover sweet;

The last song of the wren and thrush

Breaking through the drowsy hush -

If kindly peace be anywhere

'Tis surely there, 'tis surely there.