Early summer days

This photo sums up the last few weeks in our area. Unsettled weather, intense sunshine, pouring rain, amazing clouds and colours. I take this back route home from our village shop, and the farmer has just cut a path through the grass. I can hop over the fence into our back garden.

The first thing I see in the garden is our old plum tree, now dead, but covered in these white clematis flowers. This is one of the first things that I've done in the garden which has actually gone according to plan! It has taken about four years to scramble over the tree, covering it with foliage and flowers. 

In the veg garden we have lots of rhubarb at the moment. I've been stewing it with orange zest, brown sugar and a little water, and serving it with baked ricotta and honey, a recipe I found in my Riverford recipe book. I highly recommend this combination. Last week, I bought English strawberries on the market and added those to the rhubarb before poaching, the flavour was fabulous.

I am supposedly decluttering (again) and I have managed to move some of my stuff along. But I saw this chipped, crazed old blue and white bowl in Age Concern for £2 on Friday and could not resist it. Despite the high winds and rain, seasonal flowers are everywhere. It's always this time of year when a house in my parents' village puts out bunches of lupins for sale. I look forward to them, as they are such a burst of dramatic colour and shape. When mum rang me to say that she'd seen the lupins and bought  me a couple of bunches, I leapt in the car to go and collect them. Lupins don't last long, and they probably look best in the midst of a cottage garden, but I had a go at painting them to preserve the memory. I had a lovely couple of hours doing this.

Incredible shapes and colours.

Just love this time of year, when even some of the most neglected corners of my garden look almost pretty.

And you can pick a posy from the garden in a few minutes.