Just when I thought the sweet peas were about finished, more have appeared. Oh, joy! The scarlet runner beans which reappear each year, are flowering and tiny beans are forming. I’d already picked all the blackcurrants – I thought – but there are more! The gaura, ‘ballerina rose’ which I feared had succumbed to frost, is flowering.

The parsley has mostly gone to seed. I have parsley trees! But they look rather lovely with shasta daisies pushing up through the green canopy of parsley flowers. Tomatoes are ripening. Even though the bay tree seems to have died, it has shoots growing at its base, and its leaves have turned a lovely copper colour. The ‘sexy rexy’ rose, which I moved from the garden to a large pot a few years ago, is flowering brilliantly this year, underplanted with self-sown violas.

From my window, as I write, I can see the climbing rose ‘Cecile Brunner’ which I cut back with hedge shears after its first flowering, beginning a second flowering. I have also spotted the white-and-tortoiseshell cat, a frequent visitor, curled up on a cut-and-drop pile under the camellia. And it looks as if the hoped-for rain is beginning to fall.