Late summer

Are we coming or going? This year slides inexorably past and yet time seems to be standing still. After the heatwave, the clouds and showers make it feel positively autumnal. Despite the fact that it is high season, the central beds of the flower field are entirely empty as we wipe the slate clean. Yes, again.

I feel like we are living in anticipation of something and that is not good for the human brain. One must haul our consciousness back to the present. To the now. The things we can touch and smell, taste and hold. I’ve never managed true journaling (I go hot and cold at the idea that I might die suddenly and my innermost thoughts would be there for all to see) but here is my next best thing. A list of things that are happening right now. Things that make this moment the place I want to be.

Courgettes for every meal

Yes, in my world, this is to be celebrated. Can I suggest these simple recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi? I can vouch for the filo pastry pie, although I haven’t quite worked out whether you can eat Nigella damascena. It would be handy if you could because I have bloody loads of it.

The trick with courgettes is to keep harvesting today even if you have trugs full in the kitchen. If you leave them on the plant, you know what they will look like by tomorrow. Also, the first tomatoes…

 A cold evening in which I put on a jumper and my slippers

 Oh the bliss of slippers. Mine are felt ones from Sanchos and they come highly recommended. If I had one wish it would be for them to have sturdier soles because nipping out to pick a few more courgettes in suede soles is asking for trouble but I am, as I have said before, remarkably lazy. Which might also explain why curling up on the sofa on a rainy night and pretending it was October was my idea of perfection.

How longevity of phlox

Every year, I put a few phlox plants in an old feeding trough on the wall of the courtyard. It has had to move as we have had to put up some form of barricade to try and keep Morag from following us out to work. However, they have taken to the move well and I think they have been in full flower for months.

The scent of jasmine

I am not always excellent at growing plants in containers. They do need more admin and upkeep than you would imagine. I have had a clotted cream jasmine in a massive terracotta pot just outside the back door and it makes my day more often than you might ever expect. The flowers don’t last very long but they keep coming (if I remember to feed it) and one sprig in a bottle next to your bed will do more for your mental health than a month of journaling. [This is not professional advice; I may be using hyperbole for effect.]

 A Katherine Hooker sale

Ok, this is one where I looked forward to autumn again. But on the hottest day of the year, I bought one of these coats. And a pair of tweed gloves. And I am not even a little bit sorry.

Dahlias

 Do I need to say more? The dahlias are hitting their stride and, bizarrely, the recent deluge has swelled the plants after the heatwave and now they are producing more flowers than I can keep up with. I kept the yellow for dyeing and I will admit, it has grown on me as a cut flower. And not one, but two, cafe au laits. The new dahlias that I got this year as rooted cuttings are a good month behind the over-wintered tubers but I have high hopes.

Oh and I didn’t like the ‘Creme de cassis’ after all. It’s going.

This is the picture I posted on Instagram on the last day of July. I will label as many of the varieties as I can but the majority of them came from the National Dahlia Society in 2015 and a) they did send a number of the wrong varieties, b) that was a long time ago and I didn’t label them well enough and I have moved them all at least three times and c) many have succumbed over the years so I have names with no dahlias, and dahlias with no names.

I signed up to Ffern

My decade of pleasure continues. I am trying really hard to locate pleasure in things other than food (my most everyday source of bliss) and spending money on luxurious things but I did make an exception for this one. Because packaging is one of my obsessions and Ffern does packaging very well indeed.

Apparently their studio is in the Blackdown Hills. That isn’t a huge area so I can’t help thinking that they might unknowingly be my next door neighbour. (If you know where they are, could you let me know?)

Also, I get to smell lovely.

Hedge plums

Although Alice Vincent seems to have a glut of plums already, my stone fruit in the orchard is still many weeks away from anything meaningful. However, my edible hedge is gloriously abundant (my excuse for not having been quite organised enough to have had it trimmed yet). The sloes are still green and the hazelnuts still little, but the Myrobalan plums (cherry plums) provide a perfect snack at the end of every dog walk.