Day for night

29.2C at 17:00. A warmer day and yet … and yet still a trace of underlying coolness in the air. Looking at the Windy app our airstream seems to be coming from cooler air from the mid Atlantic still. But that will change as the high pressure centred over Italy grows.

As we near the solstice (22:40, 20 June) our shutters come into greater use opening and closing with our changing rotational position to the sun. (When I say opening and closing I mean me largely doing the o-ing and c-ing. It’s a bind in many ways but I love the different light qualities as light sips and creeps through fissures into darkened and penumbral rooms. Think Vuillard and some 17/18 century Dutch interiors, Vermeer and maybe Matisse.

The other activity done in these days is getting the hundreds of metres of drip irrigation pipe constellated to whatever slightly wayward planting I have done. Each year I end up with more short bits like broken dry spaghetti as I cut and join in corners and t-junctions so that one source can cover a terrace (see extra where sky blue has blown out)

Moving from soft, sometimes downright toe-stubbing darkness to super bright light can set my eyes a-wavering and can give me a brief, thankfully brief, flickering migraine. My new sunglasses our an absolute godsend.