Night flower

A busy day. I can tell that (through the wonders of backblipping) because my only two photos today are of a dahlia taken in a panic in the kitchen after shutter shutting time.

Super-hot again today. It feels like forever that the daytime temperature has been well above 30 degrees, but is in fact just 10 days or so. More strimming of the eternal 'lawn' (it's honestly not that big an area - just very very long grass and a very underpowered strimmer). So far I guess I've done 10m by 6m.

Tonight TallGirl surprised me when I was trying to clear out some old stuff from my sewing boxes - where I gather bits of material or old clothes that 'might come in useful one day'. A couple of charity shop purchases that turned out to be far far to big (a white embroidered skirt and lacy dress) were things that all of a sudden I realised I was never going to alter for me, because I just wouldn't wear them. Thrifty thoughts forced me to ask TallGirl if she wanted them before I put them in the recycling box or tore them up for rags - and to my astonishment she looked delighted at the thought. Now TallGirl is quite the 'tomboy' (a word that I'm sure is frowned on now but sums up what would take me a paragraph to explain) so the thought of her choosing frothy lacy white clothes, and a dress and skirt at that, is amusing. But of course it just adds something else to the pile of ongoing jobs...

Anyway, here's one of the dahlias from the veg garden, which has been adoring the mantelpiece in the kitchen for a week and is showing few signs of failing (unlike the sweetpeas which flag after two days - good job I have so many of them!)

Today was also the day we had the surprising news of some friends from Scotland coming to stay. We knew they were hoping to come, but they have such a long drive to get to us (from Spain, not Scotland) that we didn't think it would actually happen. So that has lifted spirits and given new impetus to TallGirl's battle to actually tidy her room, rather than being distracted from the task by the delights of painting, reading, etc etc.