Sometimes blog pieces just write themselves. We’ve had a busy few days and so this evening I find myself sitting down to keyboard after an evenings weeding. I was cleaning out the lavendar which is per chance one of the only flowers (shrubs?) that I have managed to grow or indeed overgrow in my garden. It is so satisfying to pull the overgrowing grass out of the lavender patch as the bees have buzzed off for the evening and I have to wriggle under the plant to get to the grass and the smell oh the smell of the purple lavender. And pulling the grass, however careful, I pull some long strands of purple flower with it and so separate them and place them aside to continue weeding.

Job done, I sit on the toddler’s soft surf board (perfect for gardening, saving the knees) and pull the leftover strands of lavender into a bouquet, I snip the ends tying them with chord when my collie Pepe comes to sit with me. His loving head on my legs  for a while until his giddier comrade, Sam, our other collie, comes looking for equal attention. And then, and this is possibly the bloggiest I’ve ever gotten, three of our kittens; Lily, Hermione and Harry (for that’s what the children have decided their names are today) peer from under the lavender bush and come to join in.  To think I spend the whole day shooing, shouting and brushing them out of my kitchen. What is more, I know I am but a dog’s snarl and a mother cat’s hiss away from the bubble bursting but I’ll keep going.

The lavender makes it to the vase, the red wine to the glass, and the farmer to the seat alongside me when a sneaking eight year old peers around the kitchen door grabbing a blanket and a chair to sit at the door of the farmhouse while his younger brothers sleep. It may be August but it’s not warm, it’s cold but it the summer cold that sits on your skin unlike the October Irish cold that gets right under.

It’s all very very good, the stuff of perfect summer evenings.