traditional summer

Whoever said July was going to be a scorcher was on the wrong track. On July 11th we held a surprise party here for my husband. It was the wettest night of the year so far (but still a good party) and it has been raining and blustering on and off daily since. This weekend a photographer came down for a two day photoshoot for a magazine feature next year, sadly it had rained almost nonstop for three days beforehand so lots of my favourites were trashed, then it rained and blew gales for most of the weekend. Luckily the photographer was very keen on inside shots so we did lots in the flowerhouse, and rushed out for the necessary outside shots. But I was rather sad as there were lots of areas of flowers that I would have loved to have shot - blocks of different ammis, annuals, gorgeous patches of scabious, swathes of lime green nicotiana, waving pink and white sanguisorba, dahlias, drifts of mixed achillea. half an acre of lovely blue-purple phacelia..... But I'm sure he did his job and got some good shots anyway. It's sometimes hard to let go when you need to!

If it is dry tomorrow I'll try and get out to take some field shots. Meanwhile here are some poor snaps of mine to show some of the things we got up to inside.

Meg is away for three weeks, so we took on someone else to cover for two days, plus an occasional student. Linda really got stuck in, but sadly she couldn't stay long because of family health commitments although she enjoyed her few days here, but we hope Siobhan will come through the summer until she goes back to uni, she has already spent a year working on farms in France and Corsica so she's used to the glamour of it all! I was amazed that 15 people applied to come and weed, I guess there just aren't many jobs round here, which is probably rather lucky for me.