High summer

Goodness the summer has flown by in a whirl of heat, family, trips, renovations, work and play. My teens got their exam results (big, big ticks for both - I'm a very proud mum) and now it's back to school time but with no back to school! Neither of them are off to University this year (phew) but both are working and it all feels very odd! My routine usually falls in with theirs and now their routine is constantly changing and I'm slightly at sea - hence the lack of organisation and blogging!

Anyway enough excuses - time to do some rounding up of the last couple of months. There is a Daisy garden to tell you about, a trip abroad and an inspiring project  but I'll start with a post that I started in July but got distracted from and reminds me of the hot, hot days of July when the county was baked brown and the sea sparkled endlessly - oh I did love it. 

It was a wander along the cliffs on the north coast of Cornwall and illustrated the gorgeous dried out textures and golden palette left by the heatwave that lasted for a month or so.

All the wild flowers bloomed and set seed so quickly, their flowering season shortened by the heat, some leaving charred, black seed heads (spot the curled up spider hiding).

Snail traffic jam!

Their shells reflect their surroundings beautifully, though I was surprised to see them happy in the full sun - I thought they would seek the shady places. These are hard-core coastal snails.

Snail roundabout?

The crackly, dried stems were covered in snails sunbathing!

Vivid rusty browns...

and delicate papery golds...

Even the vibrant magenta of the Sea Thrift was bleached of colour.

A dropped shell echoing the subdued palette.

Swaying grasses with their lovely seedheads rustling in the slight sea breeze - you would think this was taken in September not July!

And on this day even the colours of the sea and sky were muted - we were approaching the end of the glorious weather and about to go back to much more unsettled weather and the vivid blues and greens  were fading...

but not completely!

We still managed a stunning sunset or two.

-xx💛xx-