We have recorded no rain up at Community Roots since June 9th and it’s been the same here, just 10 minutes away but overnight there was some rain and everything looks just a bit brighter today. I went out early and caught some raindrops on plants and spider webs.
Nasturtium
Dill seed pods with raindrops taken through the window
Raindrops on a spider’s web
The hanging baskets outside our favourite coffee shop in Redruth are looking really lovely.
I haven’t sown Love-in-a-mist this year (an oversight) but discovered a couple of self-sown ones in the stony path.
Our tomatoes in the greenhouse are ripening up nicely. This one caused some amusement.
My first thoughts for today’s six were our six drought damaged Hydrangeas but I need something more uplifting as maybe you do too. So today, it’s the few flowers we have left and their scent. Interestingly, the gardening charity RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey have had such problems with their hydrangea collection this summer that they are thinking of moving them North to its gardens in Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire, to allow them to thrive away from drought and heat.
The beautiful rose we were give for our Golden Wedding 9 years ago flowered earlier in the year and is now having a second go. Its scent is proper old fashioned rose, the sort that as kids we used to try to make into perfume!
Crown Princess Margareta, a fragrant English Rose
We are keeping our Sweet Peas watered with grey water and watering cans and they are giving us colour and scent which is delightful. We get our Sweet Peas from Sarah Raven as plug plants each year, rather extravagant but such lovely varieties.
Sweet Pea – Dark Velvet
Sweet Pea – Prince of Orange
From The Clouds of Scent Sweet Pea Collection
Sweet Pea – Lady Collier
Those Sweet Peas fill us with perfume all day and when the sun goes down, we have Night Scented Stock, which daughter no 2, a bad sleeper, used to call ‘Night flowers,’ as we took her for a garden walk to settle her back into sleep. Some may think they look a bit scruffy and inconsequential in the daytime but their scent at night more than makes up for that.
The herbs fill the air with their particular, foody smells but maybe they are for next week.
I’d like to recommend a beautiful little book, “Led By The Nose’ by Jenny Joseph, its subtitle ‘A Garden of Smells.’ You may know her name from her wonderful poem, “Warning” which you can read here if you’d like to. This delightful book follows her garden month by month, not by colour or what she can see in her garden but the smells that lead her and the reader around by the nose.
Jim, over at Garden Ruminations, hosts Six on Saturday Pop over and in the comments, you’ll find so many delightful posts from keen gardeners all over the world.
I met M for lunch today at The Olive Grove and we enjoyed a long natter and some delicious food in the most amenable environment
Tempura King Prawns
Served with salad garnish and sweet chilli dipping sauce. We shared a bowl of crunchy chips.
We shared a beautifully presented serving of White Chocolate Tiffin
There’s a new summer topper on our local post box.
Charming topper on our street
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We made a pinhole camera for the eclipse yesterday and it worked well to see the changing shape of the sun but it was a very small image. Blue Peter skills came in handy here. We were glad of the colander!
Such a strange cloud a day or two ago, not a vapour trail and unlike any we had spotted before.
Perhaps there is a nephophile out there who can explain.
I’ve just started a new book, the new ShelterBox bookclub choice that arrived in the post on Monday. It’s a very powerful read that I am finding hard to put down. 
It’s less of a story that a collective diary, written by twenty-one women who are each recording their experiences in Kabul as the Taliban take over again in August 2021. I’ll tell you more when I’m done. I’m just 80 some pages in.
To see the partial eclipse this evening, we went up to Copper Lane behind us, looking out to St Agnes and the sea and caught it in the holes of a colander! The light went to dusk for a while, a strange, eerie light with sunset still two hours away. The rooks went crazy, cawing and flying into the rookery but came out again only a few minutes later when it all got brighter again.
The eclipse starting
The strange light
The rookery
The eclipse moving on
The last partial eclipse was in March 2015. You can see the post here.
Yesterday, I made a vegan, gluten free chocolate cake for the birthday of one of our wonderful directors of Community Roots. Sadly I couldn’t be there this morning but I’m told it went down well. 
My dear SIL in Atlanta sent me a book to make me smile, hopefully laugh out loud – and I did! I loved this story but the laughs were definitely balanced by rueful smiles and some tears. For many of the situations, I was thinking, “Been there, done that and not always happy about it!”
There was also so much love, a great deal of joy, lots of infectious humour and characters who really got under my skin. It is so beautifully constructed and as one reviewer said, “heartbreakingly honest.’Â Ann Patchett’s comment on the front is spot on. 
Our Sweet Peas in the kitchen fill the room with their lovely scent. I love the reflection in the shiny hob too.
Our tomatoes are ripening. I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the very dark ones but they are both pretty and tasty.
In May, we went with friends to Amsterdam and while there visited a lovely quilt shop as our friend K is a quilter. A couple of weeks ago, an enormous box was delivered and to our utter delight, inside was the most beautiful quilt, the pattern being the very distinctive houses of Amsterdam, along with a bridge and canal. Absolutely stunning.
We were given washing instructions but wanted to hang this beautiful piece of art rather than throw it over a bed. We found a curtain pole, a pair of bronzed hooks and over the weekend, have rearranged paintings on our landing and hung the quilt in pride of place in the stairwell. It looks amazing and we love it.
Little Amsterdam designed by North Sea Quilters and made by K.
The amount of work in this is remarkable and we treasure this beautiful piece.
Last week was all our white flowers and this week the golden orange hues have caught my eye. As we in Cornwall move into our 5th heatwave and a hosepipe ban, I don’t know how much longer the flowers will last. They have all been going over more quickly than usual already given we have had no real rain since early June, just a smidge of Cornish mizzle last week.
We’ll concentrate our watering, with watering cans, on the food we are growing especially the tomatoes and sweetcorn and hope that the leeks, kale and kalettes will survive. The autumn raspberries are looking very small and really need lots of rain…..and then sun!
Courgette flower
Orange Cosmos
Begonias in a chimney
These were seedlings I was given as volunteer harvest at Community Roots and I didn’t get the name.
California Poppies
Nearly 7′ Sunflower
And today, a very short, sweet poem by Emily Dickinson. I’m not sure that yellow is so rare in nature but like that the sunflower picture gives us blue too.
Nature rarer uses Yellow
Than another Hue.
Saves she all of that for Sunsets
Prodigal of Blue
Jim, over at Garden Ruminations, hosts Six on Saturday. Pop over and in the comments, find so many delightful posts.
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