That beautiful season summer!
Filled was the air with dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all freshness of childhood.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a way to encourage the girls into the garden and help water the plants, my husband painted the green house with a playful Tomato Time logo. He added a character, from the rather peculiar animation Adventure Time, that both my children love. Marceline the vamp queen can be seen biting into a tomato. Although he probably enjoyed painting more than planting! I am quite impressed however, as six varieties of tomatoes all grown from seed are thriving. The girls proudly showed me round and Dean named the different varieties as, Money Makers, Red Pear, Aisa Craig, Iloi, Alicante, and Tigeralla. There was also talk of natural insect and slug repellents. Therefore basil plants have been grown alongside the tomatoes to deter the insects and the floor of the greenhouse has been sprinkled with baking soda and kept as dry as possible to ward off those pesky, ever hungry slugs.




Hedgehog Hotel
Yay!!! Finally our beloved garden visitors will have a safe little hut to sleep and take refuge in during the winter months. Dean and the girls built this little hut below. It still needs a tunnel positioned at the entrance so that predators won’t be able to get at our endangered spiky friends.

For us the month of July has been busy. Thanks to the easing of lockdown restrictions we have been able to visit some other family members and celebrate birthdays and graduations. We have also been out and about a lot more and even though my mum is quite frail, it has been a refreshing change for her to have a drive in the countryside followed by a picnic. In addition to visiting beautiful Exmoor and Dartmoor I have been walking closer to home and enjoying the local Grand Western Canal and Knightshayes Impey woodlands. Both of which offer a much needed daily fix of fresh air and immersion of nature.
Speckled Wood Holly Blue Grey Tipped or Small White? Gatekeeper Red Admiral
I am still in the process of learning to identify these beautiful flying insects so please do feel free to correct me in the comments below if I have named any of the above wrongly. We have also noticed on our walks Peacock butterflies, Painted Ladies, and Commas.
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
Maya Angelou