The Big Beautiful July Poem

Hello! It is time for our Big Beautiful Poem of the month. Every week you tell me the things that have made each week seem particular to that moment in the year where you live/in your life, and then at the end of the month I stitch them all together into one big beautiful poem, set out week by week so that we can trace the changes. Today I am doing it through a rotten fluey thing I picked up on my last 24 hours of holiday so excuse any rough edges…

Let me know how you like it! Her we go…

Glorious sun and just enough cooling breeze canvassing in Islington North. Everyone was out to vote

Feeling accomplished after an early morning vote and feeling excited having felt our tiny baby move for the first time this week. Emotions as changeable as the weather

Going to the Hampton Court Flower show, sitting in the wind and the sun, spending some money and soaking the atmosphere up

The heady scent of lime trees in flower filling the air on my evening strolls

Getting nervous as I always do at General Election time, hoping whoever wins will do the right thing for our children’s children and the planet

The weekly veg bag containing squashy tomatoes which needed to be cooked down immediately for a sauce which tastes and smells like concentrated summer

So chilly and drizzly this week, hard not to be fed up with no sun

Going out into the meadow at 4:30am after sitting up watching Election Night and watching pink clouds scudding across the sky: it felt refreshing and hopeful

Independence day here in the U.S., a glorious mix of blue sky, flags flying and houses all decked out in red ,white and blue buntings. Fireworks through midnight and my dog hiding under the covers until it finished

A family trip to the polling station, everyone able to vote, followed by a trip to the pub

The mute swan cygnets have trebled in size since I saw them two weeks ago

Raspberries plump and gorgeous with nectarines, lily pads on the water. Not quite the summer weather we’ve hoped for but still the season rolls on

Mixed feelings today about the weather because nature needs some rain but the school fete doesn't!

The wind of change blowing with talk of service and hope in the new Prime Minister's address

Californian poppies bringing sunshine that the sky isn't

Charming small town Independence Day celebrations - morning parade with marching bands and community pancake breakfast at the firehall, fireworks over the lake at dusk, and decorating my annual flag cake

My garden path white with fallen flowers from the jasmine arch

At 9.30 pm, the crows call goodnight to me as they fly to roost

Fuchsia flowers just starting to dangle their deep redness, almost ready to make a granddaughter crown

Wimbledon on the TV

The grasses and some wild flowers in the fields have started to fade and die off, a bittersweet moment

Making a little hay (for the chickens) from our small ‘meadow’ before the rain sets in again. The weather feels too autumnal for July

The hardy summer perennials are braving the heat and popping up in new and unexpected places where their seeds have been scattered by wind and birds

Watching the results of the UK elections and hoping our in the USA will be as civil

Dead heading the rambling rose in her infancy but grateful for the blooms that developed, and despite the months of summer left there is a feeling in the air that autumn is on its way

Opening windows wide at night and then drawing the shades in the morning, preparing for a heat wave that never quite reaches the coast

Sitting in our folding chairs still smoky from our camping trip two weeks prior. Watching the sunset while we wait to see a fireworks display with hundreds of other families in a nearby park. Balmy air and the distant sound of a jam band surrounds us. This is when my heart knows that it is finally summertime

Wearing Ffern perfume as I navigate London to worship Yoko Ono at Tate Modern

bright sunshine and the powerful wind coming up off the English Channel

It’s very un-July and everything’s behind and I’ve been incarcerated by migraines, but I did have some local raspberries this week and some ‘Wimbledon’ strawberries from the garden

In Northern California the mimosa trees are blooming in all their fluffy glory, the moon has waned to darkness, and the blackberries are drying up almost as quickly as they ripen

Watching Wimbledon and the Tour de France as I recover from knee surgery. Surgery is never fun, but I couldn’t have timed it better

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The first small batch of apricot jam - tangy and bright as the sun

Maroon flowers of the purple podded mangetout, and the beautiful dark pods with a bloom on them like a Victoria plum. Picking and eating them for breakfast in the rain in my pyjamas

Sports Day at school - team colours, banners, music and chanting and strawberry scones in the staffroom afterwards for tired teachers who had been on cheerleading duty

Roses taking a battering from the stormy wet weather so I've been collecting rose petals, which smell amazing, to dry and press for the first time

Fresh tomato tart with heritage tomatoes, fresh basil and slow cooked onions

Despite the rain, the slugs, and the cats, there's a bud on the sweet peas near the front door

Spending a day at the beach. Toeing my way slowly into the chilly water almost unable to get in, then suddenly getting so comfortable that I stayed in quite a while. Coming home feeling salty and sandy

A wander with hundreds of orchids on the South Downs. A proper wild flower meadow

Great looming skies all week, last evening’s low sunlight uplighting trees in City Road, unreal and theatrical. The sky deep, scab red with a burgundy-tinged rainbow

Essex plum time on Tottenham Marsh, for a frangipane tart

Stunning sunsets this last week with skies of turmeric yellow and paprika orange

The garden is alive with butterflies, bees and a dragonfly or two

Sweet peas tumbling over a neighbour's fence and a wall of blowsy roses outside the allotments

Sitting on my window seat with a warming mug of cacao, gazing out at the rain, and reading (Rooted by Lyanda Lynn Haupt)

Six new moorhen chicks on the pond at work, down to five cygnets though

I have enjoying watching the great tits bringing in food to the loud cacophony of chirping chicks in a nest box near to where I have a morning cup of tea…but today absolute silence. They must have fledged yesterday

A beautiful sunset on Druridge Bay beach; a naked outdoor shower at the shepherd's hut I was staying in - exhilarating!

Up early and struck by how quiet it is in the garden. Only the woodpigeon still cooing. I miss the dawn chorus but the silence has its own charm

A lovely local festival with great music, dancing, face painting and dodging of showers

The garden has offered gooseberries with pink blushes and red sorrel leaves for salads

Chives, mint, rosemary and thyme, so we eat couscous with fresh herbs and leaf salads. The rain has made all verdant but sitting out is rather challenging

Last day of school getting absolutely drenched while picking up the kids. What a start to the autumn, eh, summer break…

First heat wave of summer accompanied by brilliant sunsets of reds and oranges courtesy of wildfire smoke in the upper atmosphere

The scent of dry fields after hay mowing

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Picked blackberries for compote in the morning sun and mixed them with Essex plums

Finally there are butterflies and the air is filled with the buzz of bees!

A new diary for next academic year to fill

Savouring a few fresh raspberries picked on a walk around the garden

I picked a few ripe blueberries yesterday from the garden, a sign that summer is finally here

Busy Julyish calendar: school concerts with my youngest and visiting universities with my eldest

Regarding my neighbour’s spectacular crocosmia Lucifer with a strange mixture of delight and regret because it's the harbinger of late summer

Ate my first strawberries from the garden. (So did the birds…)

Our blackberry vine has fallen victim to heat and drought, but the peaches and summer corn coming from the local orchards and farms are divine

This week I’ve been cutting lavender, rosemary, sage, mint, chives ready to dry them for creating my own dried herbs. The butterflies are out, bees on the lavender and a glorious buzz in the air

The sound of the wood pigeons, now that lots of the birds have calmed down. The sparrows are still shouting and squabbling though, darting about all over the garden. And the owls have started calling again

Tapas in the garden in the shade

Trying to work out how the new portable aircon works

At last hammock weather

The maize in the field behind our house has grown tall enough to make the field margins into green walled corridors that the swallows and housemartins scoot along, so low you can feel the rush of air, feeding on the insects the heat has brought out

Juvenile woodpeckers at the meal worm and hummingbird feeders forgoing suet, garden bedraggled from record breaking heat and late afternoon torrential rains. Finally this morning a lovely cool breeze

New brightest of gold blossoms appear daily beneath the deep green fanlike leaves of our zucchini plants

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Made the mistake of growing catnip in my garden this year to dry for my cats this winter. The neighborhood cats have discovered it. Yesterday two of them were rolling around in my yard and another actually broke into the fenced garden and found the motherlode

Lavender abuzz with bees, dahlias infested with blackfly

My Sessile oak tree has produced some beautiful fresh red and green leaves

Opening the window wide to let in the cool air, brought in by the sudden deluge of rain as we ate a late dinner yesterday. Sticking my head out the window to smell the petrichor

hearing and watching a charm of goldfinches dance above me

Filled old ice cream tubs with picked our first blackberries of the year yesterday evening and they were sweet, juicy and ready

Visiting the lotus flowers unfolding in the glasshouses such giant pink beauties

Keeping eyes out for ripe blackberries. Jam and crumble pending

A young, long-eyelashed roe deer nibbling the lower boughs of birches in my garden at dusk. She spied me and gracefully bounced away

It was darker, or rather, less bright, at 5am today than beginning of last week. Squirrels stealing the not-quite-ripe apples from the trees

The dusk comes earlier in the evening, and is shorter

Finally a hot afternoon with enough time to savor a pale pink guava sorbet while leisurely strolling through the Farmer’s Market

Navigating the slippy cobble stones of temple bar in Dublin, soaked after a rain plump, roasted from the rising heat. Hair stands no chance!

Cutting back all the long grass that the wind and rain had flattened all over the mown paths in the lawn

The swifts are really enjoying swirling and screaming overhead every evening and I keep wondering how much longer they will hang about before flying off to their winter home

Nights are pulling in darker again and everything seems to be at maximum growth now both outside and inside (houseplants are bursting forth in all directions!)

The full moon was hidden from sight by grey drizzling clouds, but you could feel it's presence

The joy of endless sweet peas - filling the house with little vases of them, and the exquisite scent

Lavender blooming everywhere full of foraging insects

Tomatoes, green beans, courgettes, cucumber and herbs almost ready to start harvesting

Dusk earlier and sunrise later signals the turning of the wheel at last, ongoing heat-humidity-torrents of rain-high winds, antics of juvenile woodpeckers investigating the world

Hazy blues of love-in-a-mist filling every space

Enjoying the runner beans straight of the plant and into the steamer - a knob of butter and twist of pepper

That’s it! How beautiful. Thanks you again for all of your contributions and I look forward to doing it all again for August!

I’m off for another honey and lemon…