Of gardens

God Almighty first planted a Garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures ... I may well have mentioned my study of Bacon's Essay's in my Higher English class at school; I wasn't keen on them at the time, but I never cease to be amazed at how key sentences from them still stick in my mind, to come sliding back out when needed. I thought of it today at midday when we were having a strangely-timed walk along the shore called The Ardyne - I had a paddle, though I betcha blipper Lady Findhorn would have been in the sea in her cozzie - and noticed how the rocky area protecting the road from the sea is covered in wild flowers. Hard to capture the profusion, but I tried ...

There was a host of seagulls sitting in a field; I don't know if the high tide had robbed them of their usual gathering area, or if the presence of a large number of visitors with tents at the end of the beach had put them off even more than it did us, and a gang of Canada geese flew noisily overhead to congregate among the black cattle a field further on. That's the joy of the Ardyne - the close proximity of shore and fields.

We didn't eat in the garden because of the (expletive) cement mixer, though after a banana and two mugs of tea I shut my ears to it and cut back some of the spent flowers that threaten to overwhelm the path at this point in the summer. This was a necessary precaution as we were entertaining on the patio in the later part of the afternoon, having first ascertained that the cement-making would be over by then. Regular readers of this journal may know that our oldest Dunoon friends, whom we met first in 1974 just after we'd arrived here, live along the road from us and indeed were the first people with whom we socialised in their garden when we were let out of the first lockdown. We had promised that once we actually had room with the creation of this famous patio we would entertain them, and at last weather and circumstance coincided.

I was thinking of using a photo of us all as an extra, but it might be best simply to use one of the reason why actually none of these photos is quite suitable. Suffice it to say we made short work of two bottles of wine in the sunshine and became ... quite loud. I don't know how I managed to cook dinner afterwards, but I did - and now it's almost 1am and high time I was sleeping it off.

Cheers!