The bright light in these few high months of summer is too intense for looking at the garden during the day. Our looking times are first thing, when the light is low, and then again later as it dips into the head of the valley. During the middle part of the day we go about the activity of tending and it isn’t until around six, when the light changes, that the garden starts to register once again. If we can, we down tools and make the time to take in the results of our hard work, made visible by the sun tilting into a long evening. Time to watch the colour change as the light yellows and then fades to blue and the dusk of gloaming. 

This is a time of observation and the garden actively settles into a different energy. If we have had a breeze, it often drops now and in this stillness the handover from the day to the night shift begins. From the activity of bees and the drone of hoverflies to the silence of the moths and bats that come to work the evening. Many plants come into their own at this time and the violets and the blues, which by day have sat back in bright light, begin to pulse and vibrate with an energy all of their own. In the main garden the wicks of violet veronicastrum become a point of gravity and rise above pools of denim blue Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’ and the electric indigo of Salvia patens.