It's mid July and summer is making its stately progress through my garden. The few weeks ahead of us are traditionally drier and with fewer weed seeds germinating and slowing growth tidy gardeners should have some respite from the perennial battle with whatever weed is currently most despised. Hopefully a lull in hostilities will give them, as well as the happily weed blind gardeners among us time to just enjoy being out there, absorbing the sights, smells and sounds of high summer and depositing them into our memory banks to be used as a restorative pick me up during the short dim days of winter in the same way that we store surplus rumnner beans or apples. To bring them out to appreciate and savour during the colder months is a sensory treat.
During the depths of the darkest days I find it hard to picture the landscape of summer, the deep green hillsides around me, their lumpy duvet of trees in full leaf and my garden packed with flowers and their attendant insect pollinators. So I've been out snapping away with my camera to try and capture these ephemeral mid summer moments which are so easy to forget when the days are short and the sun only manages a low weary arc above the horizon.
Disturbingly, among the flambouyant flowers, there is evidence already of a change to come and in readyness for leaf fall my Acer palmatum and Euonymus planipes are already turning colour. I try to kid myself that this is just due to dry soil but I know that they are already responding to the almost imperceptible shortening of the days.
I can't help wishing that they would wait a while longer but their colours are lovely and contrast beautifully with their surroundings, just a taste of equally enjoyable things to come.
