On sleeping and waking
Monday 22nd June. There's a jostling at this time of year; plants ready to go out and flowers in full bloom. The first of the Summer flowers are over their peak and need replacing. The opium poppies have set fat, blue-grey seed heads and I pull them out and turn them upside down to dry. Taking them out of the matrix planting changes the balance of the textures. The bronze fennel is now flowering with a sharp golden dazzle. Some of the deep purple-toned atriplex is ten foot tall. I cut back the thick chicory stems to stop it flopping onto everything else. I make a wonderful discovery by putting branches in the bedroom; chicory closes its flowers in the night time and opens them up again in the morning. If that is not the most beautiful and romantic thing you have ever contemplated sleeping next to, I have nothing else to say to you.
Tuesday 23rd June. I finally get round to thinning the fruit on the espaliers. I have been reluctant to do so simply because the weather has been so cruel that much of the fruit has been thinned for me. The path crunches with fallen apples. There are shoots so long that they vertically criss-cross the horizontal branches of the espaliers and the trees take on the appearance of a solid green wall.
Wednesday 24th June. Hugo crashes through the hydrangea bed and knocks over some tapestry properties in the process. I take the broken stems inside and press them. I remember being eight years old. I remember the turn of the nuts on the bolts. I remember the magical translucent and fragile texture that only pressed petals have. I should leave them for two weeks before I check them but I open the press the next day to add cornflowers. I did not do a good job of arranging the petals, but I get a child-like thrill of joy when I see them nevertheless.
Thursday 25th June. There are some jobs that you should be doing every few days or so: deadhead roses, cut the cut-and-come-again annuals, tie in sweet peas (or cut them), feed anything in pots, especially the tomatoes. Pictures of the most beautiful sweet pea in the world, Piggy Sue, are appearing on Instagram (seemingly exclusive to me, which I find incomprehensible). They still take my breath away and I am delighted that I have been promised some of the seed crop and so I will be able to share some more of the joy when the shop opens again in August.
Friday 26th June. This heat. Unbelievably hot. Not the clean, blue skied heat of May, but an unnatural, muggy heat. I do my daily video from the hammock rather than the studio and it is a blessed relief when the gentle rain starts to fall at bedtime.
Saturday 27th June. The rain is on and off today so I write. In the gaps between, I prick out trays of agrostemma bianca, a beautiful white form of the native corncockle. It was one of my favourite things I grew last year, so incredibly elegant and such a perfect white. Time in the greenhouse is always a pleasure but even more so when the air is thick with the scent of tomatoes. And a radio. Always a radio in a greenhouse.
Sunday 28 June. Kale with poached eggs for breakfast and pea tops in the salad for lunch. A harvest of mange tout and the first kohlrabis. I am possibly the only person in the world who can keep up with a courgette glut but it is the squash that quicken my heart. I inspect them daily. The potimarron squash have pale, striped tiny fruits and a Marina di Chioggia pumpkin has shot up the steel frame more usually used by an akebia.
