High Summer

Summer days - very full and very busy. But these are special times to be savoured for when the wind is howling around the house.

There are sports days to cheer at and much picking of peas and digging potatoes to be done. And there are other people's glorious gardens to visit, to marvel at their planting skill, buy yet more plants and eat delicious cake in cool, bunting strewn barns.

Back home I set to; already it is time to cut back the geraniums and the catmint so it will flower again in late summer. Where is the year going? Later as the evening light mellows, there is time for sitting back and smelling the pinks, roses and peonies - and maybe munch a bit more cake!

Later still. although it's not fully dark, the sounds and sights of the summer night drift in through the bedroom window:

• The hiss and drip, drip of next door's hose
• A croaking frog in the border
• The lowing of young bullocks in the field over the road to the dairy herd in the valley field, already laid down to sleep
• Flittering, fluttering pipestrelle bats
• The occasional sleepy twitter from the housemartin chicks in the nest in the eaves above our window
• The rumble and clatter of lots of tractors and trailers and bright orange lights as the farmers bring the June hay home
• A sliver of sparkling moon in the still blue-tinged sky
• Chatter and laughter blown up of the breeze from the canal side pub down the lane
• Beautiful twilight and the first stars peeping awake

But above everything is stillness. The year has turned and although we don't feel it quite yet, the slide through high summer has begun.