We're fairly regular in our habit of checking the gardens to see what needs doing; staking, dead-heading, trimming, tidying up, watering, fertilizing, in short all the things that require a gardener to be reasonably vigilant to ensure that the trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals are comfortable enough in their surroundings to continue gifting us with pleasure throughout the summer months.

Occasionally we'll embark on a more in-depth foray into the garden, implements in hand alongside compost bags to clear away detritus, cut back too-enthusiastically overgrown trees and shrubs and yank out the aggressive yet garden-beautiful thugs like ladies mantle, trumpet vines, bees balm and Chinese lanterns and Harlequin vines that tend to pop up everywhere; so, as it happens, does our red heuchera, but I take those lovely little seedlings and replant them elsewhere in the garden.

While my husband cut back far-reaching branches of the magnolia and the Sargenti crab apple trees, I set about snipping away at the spent lilies, geraniums and bellflowers, and hosta wands, and cutting off any of the deadwood on some of our ornamental evergreens. Roses required cutting back and the second growth of the perennial bleeding hearts and perennial geraniums.

It doesn't take all that long, in fact. And we find it extremely satisfying, working with the soil and the plants and observing how everything has been busily thriving this summer to optimum performance. Finding some of the begonias that I had overwintered and planted in various spots in the garden being overshadowed and overgrown by companion plants I took the opportunity to lift them and place them elsewhere in open places that had revealed themselves, crying out for notice and stuffing with those gorgeous begonia blooms.

It is absorbing and satisfying, and then we suddenly found ourselves finished, the compost bags near to full with all the snippings from the weeping mulberries and the weeping ornamental crab, the bridal-veil spirea, hemlock, potentilla and holly that begged out to be trimmed.

Then, all that was left was for us to lean back and appreciate what nature has permitted us to cultivate and enjoy in the lovely bounty of their colourful, fragrant, textured presence, to excite our aesthetic and make our summers all that more enjoyable.