Summer used to mean a week in Spain, a week in Italy and the rest of the time here in Cornwall avoiding crowds. These days it's just the latter.

Things that happen in summer:

The horseflies bite me to death (I'm lucky in that the itch wears off me in half an hour)

The sun blazes down, I dust off the barbecue and the clouds roll in

I can sit on my bench at the front of the house, wasting time on my iPad and turning brown, weather permitting (that's what I'm doing right now)

I can sit among all the masses of flowers I've planted, as I do every year, watch the butterflies, listen to the bees and enjoy the scents (I can't hear birdsong as well as I used to, but there's a chiffchaff out there right now calling out its own name)

I fret (needlessly) about the garden jobs that routinely overtake me (most things work out in the end)

I know that I have a four-foot grass snake in my compost heap (I've seen her) which has laid a healthy crop of white, leathery eggs. If I'm lucky I'll be able, as I was last year, to watch them hatch out into fiercely-independent little wriggly pencils. I've lent that part of the heap to the snakes for now but I want it back in September

Of course, the mundane and undesirable stuff still has to be done, but let's not dwell, for "summer’s lease hath all too short a date." I wish that bloody wood pigeon would shut up.


For "summer’s lease hath all too short a date."