Abundance

The newly acquired Balkan Parsley seems to be a big hit with Ivy and the bees. She sits under it daily, delicately sniffing the abundance of frothy blooms and taking lazy side swipes at the bees with her paws. I love the movement that these umbellifers bring to the garden as the lacy stems rock back and forth in the breeze. I can't wait for the Bishops flower to unfurl it's tightly packed buds so that I can enjoy their misty flowers too. As I wander amongst the flowers greedily drinking in the colours and scents and impatiently checking on the little green buds that remain tantalisingly closed, I wonder whether all gardeners are as greedy as me...

The cucumbers, strawberries and blueberries will soon be ready for picking so I am hoping for some good sunny weather to sweeten my harvest. The roses that grow against the old wall in our garden have definitely benefited from the harsh pruning I gave them earlier in the year. I always feel like a garden vandal when I brandish the shears and hack off large chunks of briar but in no time at all they are scaling the wall again reaching for the rather infrequent June sunlight. Other workers in the garden  are more secretive about their activity with the carrots and potatoes only showing their growth in a the mass of green foliage. Fingers crossed beneath the dark top soil lie large round creamy tubers and decent lengths of carrot!

On a visit down to Surrey we stopped at the Packhouse for lunch and decided to explore the interior of the 400 year old Hop barn where I spied this little chair. I then spent several minutes trying to decide whether we had room for it or not, then got impatient with myself and decided to leave it. I turned it over in my mind during the entire journey back, then called the shop a few days later only to find out it had been sold - well it wasn't meant to be I consoled myself. That evening my husband returned from a business trip and set this little chair down in the sitting room, much to my surprise! It's rather time-worn and I imagine that the seat was probably cane originally but I loved the original painted decoration across the back rest and the little turned spindles. But my husband did mutter something about there now being an abundance of furniture in the cottage...