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.
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.
It was late when I arrived home last night so here is a small gallery showing our trip from Falmouth to St Mawes to sing and the ferry ride back again. Click on any photo for the caption and if you like, listen to us singing on the ferry on our way home. It’s ‘Cornwall, My Home” written by Harry Glasson and it’s really the new Cornish anthem.
Sunset on the way home
Today IÂ have made a family recipe, Picnic Pie, for my friend and I to eat just before singing in St Mawes for their carnival. I’ll add pictures of that event later if Im not too exhausted. We are to sing from 7-9pm!
Picnic Pie – Mum’s recipe
We went to Falmouth today to see an exhibition of paintings by a local artist, Julian Christophers. I first met him when I was part of the art collective Fannie and Fox where I used to sell my stained glass work. I always found Julian’s paintings to be full of joy, full of colour and always smile inducing. I especially love his portraits. Today’s exhibition met all expectations.
Here are two of his pieces for you to enjoy but for those of my readers who are local, go and see them for yourself. You’ll come away smiling!
Loula’s Meadow – mixed media showing flowers from a dog’s viewpoint
Afterwards we went into another local gallery where the view from their window is another beautiful piece of art.
View from the window of the Beside the Wave gallery.
Falmouth Week is coming up and the streets are full of bunting. 
It’s been a day of harvesting today at Community Roots – all the onions and the ripe tomatoes all gathered in and room now to plant out the winter brassicas and the later salad crops.
Just one of the 7 varieties we grow – these are Costaluto Fiorentino
My job today was to organise a Tomato Tasting of all seven varieties. The favourite was the cherry tomato, Mango Lassi, sweet and delicious!
A Sunflower somehow planted itself in one of the poly-tunnels and we’ve been watching it carefully, not clearing it away. It has bent over and sprouted flowering stems from up and down the stem – 8 flowers so far and at least four more buds to open.
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