Tumbleweed and cobwebs....

Just why is it so difficult to difficult to get down to work again after a holiday - albeit a blogging one? It's been a month and a week six weeks since I last shuffled down the echoing corridors of my blog world. There has been the usual round of summer things here - same old, same old - and perhaps my reluctance to post has been a fear of going, boringly, over old ground. There is though a 'ruck' of stuff cluttering up the desktop of my lovely Mac; pictures for posts that never were.....

Where to start then? Where was I? I'll be brief.

Ah yes. Wasps. Well we haven't seen once since. And this is a good thing.

Sweet peas? Actually they've come good at least 3 weeks later than in previous years. Gorgeous of course; bowls, vases, jugs and glasses of them fill the house. They have a short life but a heavenly scented one.

My seeds are from Thompson and Morgan and probably 'Fragrantissima'. These however are not like any 'Fragrantissima' I've grown before; the petals are speckled and blotched. Remember what it was like, back in the day, when all the lovely coloured bits of Plasticine got mixed together?  A muddy amalgam which still moulded but looked bleugh. These sweet peas are like that. A friend down the road tells me that hers are much the same. Perhaps it is a local blight.

However, the brashness of the 'hot' border does not disappoint. This picture is at least 10 days out of date and Helleniums in red and orange now provide extra fire.

In the vegetable garden we've harvested peas by the bushel - those we can't eat as young and succulent petit pois we've frozen or converted into pea and ham soup. (I get huge satisfaction in stocking freezer and larder in preparation for the the winter months ahead.) Red and white currants have been jellied and raspberries savoured with cream.

As usual we look for things to do with courgettes. So far we have managed to eat/or give away our crop but we are fighting a losing battle. The blasted things grow at such a prodigious rate. Common sense tells me that probably 2 plants would suffice. I will have forgotten that bit of wisdom by spring of next year when sturdy little seedlings look too good to be consigned to the plant sale or compost heap.

I notice this morning that the vegetable garden, though still productive, begins to look tired and old; its freshness gone. As fruit swells and ripens - in abundance thanks to the frost-free spring I detect a slide into autumn. Sigh.

This little cherub caught my eye.

I should remember which Shropshire church it came out of but will hazard a guess at St John the Baptist in Mainstone; a building sweet and humble, sheltered from the elements by surrounding hills and at the end of a seemingly endless narrow lane. My feelings on religion - particularly the organised variety - I shall keep to myself lest I offend. (Shall we put some of my feelings down to childhood experience?) I seem to have been in a number of similar churches this summer - mostly as a curious onlooker wearing my 'nosy' hat. Almost without exception I found simplicity and serenity, both loved and neglected in equal measure; the scent of artlessy arranged garden flowers vying with dust and mould. I've no desire to worship (though if poked with a sharp enough stick I will go and sing hymns) but would fight till my end to keep them as places of stillness in our landscape. 'Nuff said.

Some hymn singing yielded these words from 'How Great Thou Art':

I ponder the small mountain kingdom in late summer; the land ripe and fruitful, a patchwork of greens and gold - a cornucopia of things 'bright and beautiful'.

Then sings my soul.