An Evening Air … Wallflowers in The Fragrant Garden

Sometimes the best part of the day is early morning before the weather has decided what it is going to do.  Other times the evening has a special quality all of its own.  The sun still shines till 8 or 9 o’clock but there isn’t the glare that you get during the day – the light is softer somehow; birds are still singing and taking dust baths in the chippings at the side of the road; bees are still buzzing round making their last pollen collection and butterflies stop and look around wondering where they are going to make their bed for the night. 

A perfect time for  a stroll or to wander round the garden picking flowers for a posy for the house or taking photographs when the shadows are shorter.

“The pale stars were sliding into their places.  The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed.  All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet.  It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater – a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.” ~ Olivia Howard Dunbar”

The garden is dappled with sunlight and shadow shining through leaf and petal. One particular plant catches my eye, and as I breathe in I smell its perfume, and smile. The ubiquitous wallflower – a flower that seems to have gone out of fashion, but one that I couldn’t do without in my cottage garden.  They are in their full glory right now, in so many different colours, with their fragrance floating gently on the evening air.  They outlast the tulips that they were planted with and keep the borders bright and cheery.

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver.  I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass, I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight, And build me stately palaces by candlelight.” ~ Charles Baudelaire”

So maybe I am just an old-fashioned kind of woman who clings on to the flowers that have been used in gardens for generations – shunning new-fangled hybrids, sticking to what I know is right for my garden and me – simple country garden plants that I love.

Caution:  My email has been hacked – so if you receive a request for money and an email saying that I am stuck in France do not respond.  As a consequence of this  all my emails and contacts have been stolen – but, for now, the hacker has been stopped and am am hopeful of retreiving everything that has been lost.

And to finish this is a collage of some of things in flower in the garden at the moment.

Elaine