Peony.

Isn't she beautiful?

My peony is, after three years, covered in blooms.

There is a faint scent from the petals.

I like to imagine her taking off in a flurry of pink tutu and doing a few jetees round the hall.

Evening scents

Sometimes, just around dusk, I wander out into the garden.It's a perfect time to appreciate things that arent always obvious during the day. The smells of the garden are different too. The earth is damp, the lavender is stronger, roses are sweeter.

I have a lot of white in the beds, and the flowers seem to shimmer in the dusk in a way that I don't see during the day. 
Orlaya is one of my favourites, delicate, lacy, frothing its way through the roses.

Then there's Nicotiana, so incredibly scented at night. I could stand and breathe in the scent for ever. 

Scent is an amazing sense. So many memories are attached to particular scents. For me, Nicotiana takes me back to my first cottage in Berkshire, in my twenties and knowing little about gardening. I planted Nicotiana around the front door and was entranced.

The most poignant scent for me, and I don't even know why, is Feverfew. Straight back to childhood I go. Maybe it was in the war years when my mother and I were in Wales. I wish I had asked her about it, but it will remain a lovely mystery.
I understand how Mole of the Wind in the Willows felt on nearing his old home.....

He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.

White petunias trailing from their pots, mingling with pink geraniums. White Astrantia, white pelargoniums......I'm beginning to sound like a garden catalogue!
The odd thing is that the whiteness was unplanned
but still so lovely.
Especially in the dusk of the evening.

All photos taken from catalogues.

Nature in the raw

We spend hours watching our small garden birds feeding on the lawn.

We have Goldfinch, Bluetits, Greenfinch, Blackcaps, Chaffinch and Sparrows.

At the moment there are lots of little baby birds, gathering to be fed by their parents. They are so very trusting.

But this creature........

.... is a Sparrowhawk, who dared to swoop down to the grass by the feeder, and snatched a baby Sparrow feeding on the grass. As he landed he glared arrogantly through the window at us. You could feel his power through the piercing eyes.

It was very upsetting.

But that's Nature, I suppose.