Summer Solstice

The skies have cleared here as well, Butty. The swallows are swooping and all's right with the world.

The children next door ,aged 1 and 2 are still playing in their sunny garden. I love to hear their chatter over the fence.

And when they come in to go to bed, they'll be all rosy cheeked and will sleep like wee logs, Gorki!

I hope so Marelli as their bedroom window is very close to our open one !

!

I've just got back from short break. I left a very happy looking garden behind when I went. Now it's a total mess! How can that happen in so short a time?

I'm going to bed. (by daylight! )

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

I learned this poem ( Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson) at a tender age to recite at the Borders Musical Festival, in Hawick, I think. In Scotland it was light even later than down here and I could often read in bed as late as 11 o clock - handy as my parents insisted on the light being out by 8 or 9!!

But you should have seen the traffic round Stonehenge today!

The fairies dance on midsummers eve. But that was probably last night. #missed'emagain

No, midsummer is 24th so you can still watch for the fairies. There's supposed to be an extra large moon this weekend too.

The sun came out at teatime and was very warm, greenhouse to hot and my first peach scented rose has come out It is a very clear night here

gracesmum I love that poem - so evocative of those summer evenings when you had been allowed to play out after tea and you were called in far too early and could still hear the older children playing rounders or skipping or roller skating, whatever the current craze in the street was at the time. Or when you had wandered off rather too far and got into trouble with Dad as a result!
When our DCs were little we had a beautifully illustrated book of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems ('The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart') I read it over and over again to them - they never tired of it.
One of the ones I've kept and now read to the DGCs.

I've still got my RLS book of poems that I had as a child. Funny how you manage to hang onto some things and not others. #missmybigdolly

I miss my huge book of fairies, it was nearly as tall as me and I have no idea where it went. It was beautiful

Gracesmum, that was always a favourite of mine too. It reminds me of the times when we were put to bed and could still hear the older children out playing in the big field behind our house.