Cloud, Eesit, Stone

Little cloud from one of the maroons announcing the Breeches Buoy Demo on 23rd August at Prior's Haven, part of the 150th anniversary celebrations for the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade. (The event was filmed by BBC Coast, and I'll post a link, for those with access to UK tv, as soon as it's available).

Beachcombings: hag stone, or holey stone, from the beach at Prior's Haven.

Now the dog rose flowers are almost gone, same colours in bindweed growing above King Edward's Bay.

In progress: lace stitch cowl in Native Shetland Wool (shade: Eesit).

Flowers, Dancing, Gulls

A fragrant parcel: new lavender  arrived from Chateau de la Gabelle, Provence. Single origin, organically grown on a sunny mountainside 1300ft above sea level… we're dreaming of flower fields and tours around perfumeries in medieval towns… (a neat way to send it, flat like a letter).

school summer holidays have begun, freesia and gypsophila my daughter chose

ballet school continues for another week - these light summer evenings I go to watch the gulls hunting among the waves while she dances

Zam Pollum, Brambles, Bees, Rock Roses...

An afternoon spent in the glorious fragrance of honeycomb, rolling up a fresh batch of 'Zam Pollum' candles (Zam Pollum is the bee queen in Leonora Carrington's novel, 'The Hearing Trumpet'). I make the candles with wax from a supplier in Lincolnshire, whose sales support the charity Bees For Development. More on their work here:

http://www.beesfordevelopment.org

We had a hot, sunny morning here and I walked around the Haven to the Market Garden on Oxford Street, the air busy with swallows, brambles beginning to flower under the goat willow:

I picked some alexanders on the way (buttercups and alexanders were so abundant this year we called it a 'yellow spring', cold as it was) for an experimental soup:

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Then a flower from the market garden, which I didn't realise was the Rock Rose of the Bach Flower Remedies ('Rock Rose became full of terror' Dr Edward Bach, 1934), or a pinkier helianthemum cousin:

It's living under the Buddha Tree by my front door now.