Yesterday seemed to bring an eruption of colour to the garden. Our usual stroll about to see what has come up, what is preparing to bloom, what has reached the apex of its bloom was as always both rewarding and reassuring that despite the voluminous sheets of rain that have drenched our landscape for months the garden and all its growing things have managed very nicely indeed, to thrive.

It is our great good fortune that we are able to enjoy such bounty of beauty. We have high hopes that the tomatoes that are flourishing now as tiny green globes will ripen eventually to taste as they should, not as they did, last year when there was insufficient sun and again, too much rain.

It's beyond lovely to be able to look out into the gardens from our house windows and see the thriving texture, form and colour that sits nestling about our home, and to catch sight, when luck is with us, of a hummingbird drawn to the nectar within the flowerheads.

The day lilies have begun their bloom, and the large, complex flowerheads of the hydrangea are beautiful in the fresh flush of colour. The fragrance of the roses, and of the trailing petunias are glorious, although not quite as prevailing as that of the lilies-of-the-valley and the lilacs, so recently faded.

Tending to the garden, now mature and capable of fending for itself due to the nature of perennials remains an incomparable leisure-time pleasure.