Wildflowers in the rural garden

The best sound in the world? Someone else in the heat of the day doing the strimming.

Nicolas is out there reducing our thigh high weeds to zilch.

It’s way too hot for such work.  But this date has been in the diary for ages and it’s his only free day for cutting the grass.

I have done my best with the lawn mower. But when it comes to slopes and tricky steep slopes, then I step aside.

Up just after 5am and we had kick-off at 7am. Which meant there were two good hours of heavy work on the first terrace below the road before it became intolerable. (It’s the steepest.)

And bless him; he will cut the entire bank down to below ankle height; but he always leaves his favourite wildflowers – Achillea, St John’s wort, hollyhocks, and some fetching annual grasses. I have no idea how he can spot anything when there is such  a jungle.

I was following behind with the rake and the wheelbarrow. Madly trying to get all the  cut grass (and weeds) into neat piles. And then I mulched around the trees.

I managed valiantly for almost three hours before my back started pinging with sciatica from the constant raking twisting movement. And I was expiring from the heat.

I must confess I hid from then on.

But before 7am I realized I could photograph more of the roses around the farm in the perfect morning light.

Dawn chorus, hooting owls, Artur trying to climb onto my lap for a bit of unexpected early morning affection. Twas lovely.

You can see the rambling rose better now that it has been freed from its strangling weeds. I must go up some time and see if the rose has any scent.

And another discovery during this dawn hour: the broad beans in flower smell just like suntan lotion from my childhood. A sort of coconut sweetness.

I was leaning into the bed to photograph the poppies that self seed like mad all over my potager, and realized there were whoppers lurking under the foliage. Whopper poppies and forgotten broad beans. Time to pick.

Except there is no time to pick. It’s hot. And the window of opportunity is early or late and nothing in between And my early was faffing about with the camera and the cat and gleefully waiting for help with the weeds.

Maybe tonight. After 9pm.