Summertime

This is an old fashioned summer. It is a long time since we had such unbroken sunny weather. I can’t take advantage of it as I would normally in that I would have been out in the garden and eating outside for much of the time. However, the weather is warm (great for me as I am feeling the cold so much at the moment) and the days are long. The long days and slow dusks bring the animals to the garden and we are so privileged to be able to watch them. Families of foxes and deer grow up here and return with their young while we watch their antics.

Summer as a season is one of nostalgia for me as I remember the long holidays of childhood. The rowan trees on the lawn are loaded with berries, some orange and other turned to red, and they remind me of holidays in Scotland with the children when they were young. Sometimes we would venture further from the cottages where we were staying, into the more remote areas of the Highlands and would see stunted mountain ash clinging to rocks without seemingly a crumb of soil, bearing those same berries.

I do grieve for our back garden. It is very steep so it is tiered and whilst Raymond always cuts the grass, I used to do all the heavy work of pruning the trees and shrubs plus the inevitable weeding and path control. I spent a lot of time working in the garden as it was quite demanding. Raymond doesn’t really have the time or the inclination but, bless him, he is outside today trying to do his bit. Unfortunately a one-day blitz is not really going to solve the problem but it should make it more presentable. Hopefully by next year I shall be allowed to spend time in the garden and tackle it again.

We had a reply yesterday from our solicitor and it looks as if at long last, Ray’s case for damages against Biffa whose lorry caused the accident, is coming to a head. We were told early on that cases such as this rarely come to Court. Judges in black and white cases such as this are not very sympathetic to defendants who have deliberately procrastinated. So it looks as if it is down to our negotiating team. The meeting is due to take place next month so it could be that this summer is really quite an eventful one.