Photograph by Serena Dobson @renovating_hillside_house
Perhaps it’s that it’s a little cooler now, or maybe it’s that we know every evening in the garden could be the last, but they do feel a bit special at this time of year. Here are the things we love most about late summer garden evenings…
1. It not yet being ‘quite’ dark as you eat your dinner outside. In a few short weeks, salads for tea at the garden table will feel like a distant memory.
2. Watching bats flit about and hearing the occasional sound of other dusk visitors from foxes to hedgehogs.
3. Breathing in the sweet smell of late honeysuckle, lavender, autumn clematis and other flowers that bloom as the evening darkens.
4. Reading a book outside until your eyes go a bit funny and you know you really ought to stop, but just have to get to the end of this chapter.
5. Popping upstairs for a cardi. After the hot summer we had, throwing something on your shoulders still feels like a bit of a novelty.
6. Finding the odd stray tomato and popping it in your mouth - or the last unexpected bloom of a rose.
7. Catching up with a neighbour over the fence or a passerby in the street.
8. Playing a card game over a few drinks in the last of the sun.
9. The solar-powered fairy lights surprising you by twinkling on as it starts to get dark.
10. Getting a faint whiff of ‘autumn’ on the air and feeling simultaneously sad that summer is almost gone and excited for kicking leaves and making soup.
The picture above, by Serena Dobson is just one of the lovely gardens pictured in our My Place pages in our September issue, which we’ve called ‘A Golden Glow’.
