Making plans. Worcestershire.

I love this time of the year. My garden looks a little scruffy in places as things start to die back. Tidying up in the garden is so satisfying as you know it will stay looking great for months.

On top of that the spring bulbs and winter bedding are in the shops. Lidl is particularly brilliant for bulbs this week. A very satisfactory morning spent planting bargain bulbs means I am looking forward to more hyacinths, tulips, crocus, and allium next spring. Deep joy.

Beauty. Malvern, Worcestershire.

Allium, poppy and fritillery display

Poppy and allium display

 The early spring flowers colours have disappeared but still many of them are beautiful. I love the fat seed pods and find a real satisfaction in collecting the seeds once the pods brown and split. There is nothing like knowing next year there will be even more beautiful flowers because you collected the seed and prevented it from being wasted on the path or in the lawn. Some flowers though bring even more joy as once the seed is gone and the remains have browned and dried, they are perfect architectural wonders of nature, eco friendly flower displays which don't need to be watered, just put somewhere safe and admired for months to come.

Allium with fat green seed pods

Poppy flowers

Garden looking gorgeous, Worcestershire.

Purple clematis

Hosta

Poppy and allium

The bright abundant flowers of spring are

 over,replaced by summers flowers, jewel

 bright and deeply fragrant blooms vying

 with one another for attention.

Scabious blue

Deep orange lily

Light blue allium

Yellow honeysuckle

Fragrant pink honeysuckle

Perfect weather.

Perfect weather

Lazy idyllic precious days

Bees buzzing about in the summer haze.

There is barely enough breeze to stir the grassy threads

Of tall foxgloves amongst the flower beds.

A cloudless sky of such clear blue

Bright butterflies dance their brief rendezvous.

The clarity of bird song on still warm air.

A day so beautiful, a jewel so rare.

An English summer sweet as strawberry

To be savoured in the mind, preserved deliciously.

By Izzy Silver

Summerdays

Summerdays

Its beautiful here

Beneath the rose strewn arbour pink

Sit with me a while

And have an ice cool beer to drink.

We can talk for a time

About life and your dreams and the things you think.

Sky azure blue

Honeysuckle scents the air so heavy as to stink.

Enjoy this day

It will last when memories of cold ordinary ones do shrink.

Ephemeral summer

Retained in the heart as precious because it's over in a blink.

Relax, unwind and breathe.

The view is magical and accompanying glasses clink

Its beautiful here

Beneath the rose strewn arbour pink.

By Izzy Silver

Feeling sentimental, a poem.

An ode to a rose-tinted childhood

My childhood was not so long ago.

Outside all summer, collecting

Creepy crawlies, toads, butterflies and freckles.

Inside all winter by the fire reading a book.

(Children's hour on tv being just that, one hour)

Today childhood is all buttons and lights,

Whatever the weather watching tv,

On laptops and the very latest Galaxy i-lumiphone,

Collecting nothing but facebook friends and trolls,

(and clips of cat and dogs in clothes, and pranks gone wrong).

How I wish the only trolls they knew

Lived under bridges with an appetite for goats,

But at least unlike my great-great-greats

They know nothing of polio, cholera or TB,

(or war or rationing or teacher wielding canes)

And these days rose-tinted glasses are cheap

So we can have pink coloured days,

(But lets go outside and enjoy the sun,

and picnics, rain and puddles, wind and kites)

By Izzy  Silver

Arran, in sunshine.

Highland cows near Lochranza

View across Broddick Bay

 Arran in is the news at the moment because the terrible snow has cut of the electricity there for five days so far. Arran is a beautiful island on the west coast of Scotland. I have visited there many times, mostly in the summer. Here are just a few pictures of the island in sunnier times.

Broddick Castle

The gardens at Broddick Castle

Glenashdale Falls, Whiting Bay

View from Holy Isle to Lamlash

The moon over Whiting Bay

Whiting Bay