The Hottest Day of the Year...

Bees...butterflies...birds... gracing my garden.

Although I feel the weight of the glass ceiling of expressing grief....somehow acceptably... 'out there' in the ether ...I never feel any pressure from my dear family and friends...who hold me, the whole   mess of me .....continuously with patience and kindness - as much as I will let them.

 Which is more and more now.... in the same way as I had to learn to let down my glass wall to receive their love and support when Robin was ill. It's learning it all over again ....without imposing on them ...to ask for what I need ...even when I'm not sure what that is...I do know I need to be alone a lot....but also not too much ...and how lucky I am that I have such a choice.

Today, the hottest day of the year,  I know I want to walk by the sea.

 So after a stop off at B&Q to buy light bulbs for the dining room, a universal plug for the bath and 2 pots of French lavender for the garden, I drive to Lyme Regis and join the crowds of holiday makers for the day....eating ice creams...or fish and chips with their fingers....strolling along the beach, along the harbour wall, along the Cobb....soaking up the weight of this rare and welcome sunshine.

 Without dog or companion  I compensate for my aloneness with my camera... and love how it takes me deep into every marvellous thing I see around me...so I forget to be weary and sad.

I'm not dressed for the heat ...still in my winter boots instead of flip flops so I'm  glad 

to walk back to the car along the river bank ......

adoring the 

perfect emerald green

waterproof shimmeriness of

  this mallard duck.

This house for sale, right on the river bank,with its sky blue shutters reminds me of all our French holidays...

and I can't resist picking a bunch of wild garlic to take home in memory of all those walks with Robin  who aways wanted to stop and eat the leaves of any wild plant....edible or not....it was one name he never forgot.

This is yesterday's picnic lunch with dear friends...including a big dollop of homemade wild garlic pesto -  magicked up from leaves picked in her garden that morning.

I add my leaves to a big avocado salad and eat it in the sunshine, attempting to read my book - Helen Dunmore's last novel "Birdcage Walk" - to the sound of the neighbours cutting their lawns and children shouting and playing in their gardens. 

As if it was a hot Saturday afternoon in August...when I lived here with Robin ....imagining there would always be another summer for us...