I’m not naturally an early riser. I’m more of a night owl, still awake at 2am with my head stuck in a book. But during the summer months, when it is properly hot and the terrace outside the kitchen is warm under foot at 7am, I am happy to leap out of bed at the weekend far earlier than I might do on a week day.
Apart from the cat and the dog, I have the kitchen to myself and I can potter in the garden with a cup of tea in hand undisturbed.
I had planned to pick some roses, but they looked so pretty peeping through the bronze fennel and the nepeta that grows around them, I found I was only prepared to pick the blowsiest flowers, the ones that are close to going over, and of course the minute I did most of the petals fell off.
Fortunately some of them made it and a bleary-eyed child has just wandered into the kitchen wanting to know the source of the lovely smell.
Sorry if some of these shots are a little dark – to get really good photographs of a garden you need to get up an awful lot earlier than my 6.50 start. More like 5am. Then the light is perfect and you don’t end up with heavy contrast or bleached-out flatness.
Beautiful, I love the sense of waking up to the summer light, it wakes me gently and I don’t begrudge it if it is earlier than needs be. Even teenage son was out on his mountain bike before 8am.
Happy to have found your blog. Your roses are gorgeous. Wish I could smell them, too!
Your garden looks gorgeous!
Your garden looks so lovely – and you are too hard on your photos…! I am trying to figure out what that tall structural plant is on right, at the back of the first pic…
Thank you so much! The plants on the right are artichokes – there is one in the bed straight ahead in the shot and one just behind it rising up from the bed on the next level down. I put them in last year and they’ve provided excellent architectural interest ever since. I’m planning to eat some and let some flower fully.