Green Garden

We really can say high summer now. It's so summery, there's such heat that yesterday we stayed indoors for some of the afternoon: too hot! But oh, the evenings in the garden ... sitting out right through into the darkness at 11 and beyond. The verbena starts to glow as twilight falls, each small head holding the fading light. The honeysuckle gets to work filling the garden with its sweet scent, the now-beaded Dierama arches over the pool with the sedge. We light a few lanterns to create tiny puddles of warm light, and an occasional flitting, fleeting shadow confirms the pipistrelles are still around. The air is warm, not hot. There isn't a breath of a breeze, the pool is still and the water hawthorn gleams whitely in the green water. Friends have joined us on a few evenings and made the time in the garden even better.

This is why I make a garden.

I get frustrated that it's so small. I berate myself for the choice of plants, for not growing them well, for not placing them right. And on an on.

But I come back to this truth time and again: the garden is first and foremost a place to be, a place to sit, a place to spend time in with friends and family laughing and chatting and eating and drinking; a place to be silent, in the early morning before the neighbours wake up and get the power tools out, when only the birds (quiet now in moulting season) and the dog break the silence, or in the evening when twilight falls and the blue haze of televisions fills sitting rooms and bedrooms and outside in the garden the trees and rooftops form deeper and deeper green silhouettes against the palest lemon yellow sky. A place to sit in the shade on these hot days, under the honeysuckle, just looking: at the grasses now coming into flower, at the Inula, each one its own tiny sun with orbiting bees and hoverflies, at the lilies arching their petals back in the true bright sunshine. A place where the green provides rest for eyes weary of screens like the one you're using right now...

Dierama beads; thanks for the photo  B, (www.catchlight.ie)

The lilies are loving the hot weather

No really, they are ...

yummmm

A new Sedum settles in, in front of the Inula (for more see here: http://www.facebook.com/Catchlight.Ireland)

Summer

And speaking of green and garden, here's another video. Now, I know Ian Dury might have been a bit much, or a bit too eighties, last week, but please please, if you never watch another video from this site, listen to/watch this one. If it doesn't work for you on Vimeo, I've included a YouTube link too. The happiness in this video is just right for summer in a Green Garden:

Wendy Morgan-Laura Mvula- Green Garden from Believe Media on Vimeo.

And as an aside, I'm still working away at colour... here's a sketch of a fuchsia blossom.

tricky fuchsia

Have a good week all!