I love the smell of Tiger Balm in the morning OR The JOYS OF SUMMER

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I am touched by your comments.

Butter As always, you express yourself beautifully.

That's a wonderful image, Butter. Thank you.

This evening's sky
Fulfilled what dusk and a lowering sun
Can give
With a strip of orange
And above, some three feet to the eye
A thumb smudged brush of charcoal
Below a rising moon
Full
In a pale indigo sky.

Sun rises in the north-east by north behind hills and is shining on my toes in a north-east facing room as I write this.

nag & soop +

Butter...one of your very best. Really is beautiful and very moving.

Wonderfully evocative, Butter

Jess - Love the 'pallid gold'.

My walk this morning,
Through a green dripping canopy
Of trees and mist with
Sun pierced shards of sunlight
That lay cracked, crazed pools
Of light at my feet.
The leaves above and below
Pillowed and twisted with wind and footsteps
Shone, shimmered and crunched
As I walked and thought
That days such as this
Are here for the taking
Offered as a gift.

Spotted my first little cascade of honeysuckle as well. Pallid gold in the sheltered wood bank.

Lovely.
But my next door neighbour had better keep her hands off my rose or I will poison her fir tree that steals all the sun and substance from my raspberries which she enjoys!

Dog roses in my hedge
And a young elder shrub
Making its way through bramble
At the base of a young rowan.
Also self-seeded there
Is a Himalayan cotoneaster.
In my garden, things like to cram together,
So holly trees grow out of hollows
In bird cherry, and ash somehow
Finds space in hedges.
I mow forests of sycamore seedlings
And birch and wild plum
Every time I cut grass.
My little garden meadows
Are white and yellow and orange
And, in a few spots, blue,
Among the golden greens
Of anthoxanthum odoratum

(and other grasses I haven't identified yet!)

Meanwhile by the roadsides
Elderflower and honeysuckle shine
Above a maroon glow of
Flowering sorrel and dock.

whew yes, came here to recover from education rant.
Just went on a lovely misty moisty walk. Dog roses and the less common white kind (field rose I think) in bloom. Quite different once you get your eye in. The white kind less translucent, chalk white, no hint of pink, with bright eggy stamens.
The wood sounds like a noisy Hong Kong restaurant - yak yak yak - its the jackdaws. The young have fledged and this week they are doing flight training. Short trial flights from tree to tree, with occasional brief forays over the path. All the while talking to each other so no one loses touch with the rest of the family.
We have had jackdaws at bird feeder for first time this year, so DH's diligent feeding has no doubt contributed to this raucous brood.

Eglantine, lovely as its name
Weaves through my hedge just the same
My neighbour hates it and complains,
But I am stubborn and the rose remains!

Bags
A slender necklace of wild roses, threads it's way through the dark green hedgerow.

Watching a family of young magpies
Eating buttercups and daisies
And squabbling over them too.
Kids!

An elderly neighbour gave me several species of irises a couple of years back. They didn't flower last year- but now their are in full bloom, and the scent is amazing. I never knew irises smell so beautiful.

One flower which I always loved as a child where Martagon lilies (Turks caps) - I bought some bulbs for a lot of money 3 times in the UK, but they never came to anything. When we moved here, an elderly uncle gave me 5 bulbs - just before he died. Again, last year they came up but didn't flower- but this year all five are about 50cm high and just about to bloom. So hope they will naturalise and increase in number.

I love the perfume that hangs in the air when I pass a privet hedge in flower. I'm transported back to the village in which I grew up. The hedges were always a magnet to butterflies and bees. Heavenly!

Does it? I didn't know that. I have some in my garden. When it flowers (v soon) I'll have a snifter.

Meadowsweet smells just like johnsons baby powder.

White (well, cream-coloured) foxgloves interspersed among the pink ones in the verges, plus buttercups in full glory, and sea radish (I think) – one of those yellow-flowering crucifers anyhow – and cow parsley.

Next it will be the white flowers of ground elder and the creamy ones of meadowsweet

Bastard balm - i shall have to look it up. Great name. And lovely words.

....Just about to wax lyrical again when I noticed a stupid error [blush) - Pheasant's Eye - not Peacocks Eye - just in case anyone is interested......

I'm sat on the bench this evening
With the sun three-quarters arched
And the breeze is more than mild -
Full, brisk and fresh.
The trees are ruffled and busy
Making moving shadows
Against the grass
And
I'm thinking of the 26 wild flowers
I saw this morning
On a long, long walk,
Full of friends and some
Bastard Balm, Peacocks Eye
And Tufted vetch
Common all around.