The smell of flowering elder mingling with the smell of timber framing recently painted with tar paint, both enhanced by the sun, will take me straight back to childhood holidays spent at my uncle's old farm - which also used to be my father's boyhood home.

I used to rush there for a one or two weeks' visit every year as soon as school was out for the summer, and as this coincided with the flowering time for the elder, in my memories the elder is *always* flowering there, just like the timber framing is always recently painted and the sun always shining ;-)