Midsummer

Here we are, halfway through the year, basking in the sunshine 

yet starting on the count down to Christmas!

For now, at least, the weather is perfect, and it's time to slow down a little and appreciate the moment. I'm finding time to laze around in the garden, admiring my un-cut lawn cum mini meadow, smelling the roses, letting the laundry blow gently in a breeze.

 Both garden and allotment are starting to be productive - peas, beans, potatoes, blackcurrants, and radishes from one; sugarsnap peas, rocket and land cress from the garden; strawberries and lettuce from both. It's that fun time when home-grown harvests are a delight, rather than the processing chore they'll become in a few weeks.

It's not quite all lazing about though. I walked up to the wood to pick elderflowers for fizz, and chopped garden mint for (perhaps obviously) mint sauce. 

The garden apples trees are in the middle of their 'June drop' when tiny fruit litters the ground allowing bigger better one to remain and grow on the tree. And I was delighted to spot this more unusual fruit - the first quince on my tree. Several years ago I was given some quinces, and saved the seeds, from which this tree grew - so it's truly homegrown fruit. 

On Midsummer itself we went out in the late afternoon to find this stunning field of poppies high on a Derbyshire hillside. Aren't they wonderful?

And I picked a bouquet of slightly-wild flowers from my garden - foxgloves, grasses from the lawn, feverfew, sage, and the first sweet pea. 

Good, quiet ways to mark the turning of the seasons.