32 Comments
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Stefanie Smith's avatar

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

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Anne's avatar

Yes, butterflies! We have to keep rescuing them from the kitchen.

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Becci Phasey's avatar

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

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Sarah's avatar

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

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Melanie Mackie's avatar

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.

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Art Vandelay's avatar

I noticed that a neighbour had a spectacular crocosmia lucifer and was filled with a strange mixture of delight, envy (how had it survived the terrible plague of slugs) and a pang of regret because it's the harbinger of late summer.

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Rosamund Saunders's avatar

Picked blackberries for compote in the morning sun after riding and mixed them with the Essex plums I have leftover from the tart I made.

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Cathryn Thompson's avatar

July is being very Julyish with the calendar busy - school concerts with my youngest and visiting universities with my eldest. Waiting for the warmth and it appears - it’s too hot said the teenagers. Bedding plants lush and blousy and the sparrows taking over the hedge.

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Anne's avatar

I love the sound of the wood pigeons at this point in the summer, when lots of the birds have calmed down. The sparrows are still shouting and squabbling though. They’re fun to watch, darting about all over the garden. And the owls have started calling again.

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Mo's avatar

ooh the owls! I love them!

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Kat's avatar

Yes Anne! I've never seen as many sparrows in my garden too. They are gorgeous aren't they.

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kathy's avatar

Have noticed the blackberries too down in the SW . Why are they two months early?? Noticing too a few more insects in last couple of warm days . The cold wet weather has really kept them away ,at least I hope it’s this !

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Tracy Coward's avatar

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.

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Paula P's avatar

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!

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Frances Ray's avatar

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

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Janet Nicole's avatar

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

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Mo's avatar

Tapas in the garden in the shade

Trying to work out how the new portable aircon works

At last hammock weather

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Sarah B's avatar

Watching the nearly full moon rise over the sea, rose pink above rippling silver and cyan, cooling into bright white in the dusky sky

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Aster's avatar

Piles of sand and damp towels strewn about after hot afternoons spent at the beach.

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