Elisa and her little girls arrived safely in London in the early hours of this morning, Vancouver time. They are joyful seeing husband and father after more than two months. The last few days have been a whirlwind, then the very sad parting hit hard and we’re missing them terribly. We keep expecting to hear the sounds of happy children.

Eldest daughter is still here for a few more days so that’s keeping us entertained and busy. Then it will be time to catch up on a few home and garden jobs. Most of all I want to start working on some new prints and hope I’m able to get into the print studio in September.

Recalling this oddly related older post: sepia memories

Summer seems to have finally arrived here with the turn of the month. After a long cold gloomy spring, the light now seems almost too brilliant, especially for photography. We’ve been out on the good days in the past couple of weeks doing a lot of pruning of trees and shrubs to keep our mature garden from reverting into a rainforest jungle.

You might recall that last month when we were visiting our eldest daughter and her partner and attending a wedding in another town, I got interested in Richard’s skilled metalwork. Using bits and pieces of intriguingly textured rusty scrap metal plates and rebar, he made me some arty stakes in a cage arrangement for my row of peonies. These ones always produce massive heavy blossoms, and it always rains when they are in bloom, so it’s a difficult job keeping them staked up in an attractive way. Now I have these wonderful garden art pieces that will look nice even in winter! You can see the peonies are now blowsy and ready to shatter.

Another plant in the garden that needs staking is the giant red crocosmia, which will be blooming a little later. We’ve been using these ‘bumblebee’ posts that we received as a gift long ago, from my sister-in-law and her husband, and was crafted by one of his daughters (sorry I’ve forgotten her name). We needed a third stake to be able to comfortably tie a wire or string around the whole clump, so Richard made another post with a rectangular rust plate. We just put it in place yesterday on the other side. Don’t all these pieces of garden art look great, and by repurposing material that might just end up as waste? Thanks, Richard!

To finish this little garden tour, here is a view of my red roses and the just finishing blue ceonothus beyond. Though you only see a glimpse of them, there are lots of self-sown foxgloves and daisies everywhere, giving my garden a wild look in the early summer.