Sea level

In an attempt to take it easy today, I sat in the garden for long enough to notice that I actually have some bright flowers to look at, Spring having morphed into summer with the arrival of two roses and two lots of lilies. The tall rose, Josephine Bruce, produces very few blooms, but the scent when they're fully out is delicious; I've had the bush since the mid-80s. The smaller red rose is 10 years old this summer, being a present on our Ruby Wedding anniversary, the orange lilies a supermarket buy a couple of years ago, and the yellow turk's cap lilies came with the house which we bought some 44 years ago. The pungent ammoniac smell of these old friends is pure summer, and makes me think of the end of term and the activities associated with that time, from my own children bringing home their work from primary school to my own departure on various French exchange trips. It's amazing how smell can trigger memory.

My extra photo is of an absolute favourite bit of road, at Toward, just passing the new back entrance drive to Castle Toward. This road, strangely only when I'm heading north, as I am in this photo, always makes me think of the shore road between Brodick and Corrie on Arran; it may have some tenuous link with the red Corrie sandstone that surfaces on the beach just beyond here.

We ended the day listening to Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony, composed during WW2 and premiered in 1943. It made me think of my very early childhood. I haven't the least idea why, other than the period of history. Like smells, music has its own powerful magic.