Marguerite

July is slipping by. The schools are breaking up, holidays are approaching. The garden is looking exhausted after the relentless heat. Royal babies are suddenly popping up all over the place. A typical summer.

The heat has relented recently, to a modest degree, with a few cooler days and a few thunderstorms, helping the lawn to recover some of its greenness. But then it just gets hot again, and humid. Almost tropical. It doesn't seem right, somehow. Not how a summer is meant to be.

I've been trying to keep up with the Proms, but it's proving difficult. There are too many of them, and not enough hours in the day. I am beginning to accumulate recordings that will need to be watched some time soon. But then you don't necessarily want to spend these warm evenings watching television when you could be outside in the garden, admiring the flowers, being bitten by things.

I have started opening the windows in the living-room in the evenings, to encourage the circulation of cooling breezes. Cat, however, sees it as an invitation to sit on the sill with her head poking outside, watching the world, or what she can see of it, go by. It seems to cheer her up no end.

Something still alive in the garden.