Summer

Summer means green for me, August is when the plants really seem to take off. We had a hot April, and a damp May and June, it's taken the plants a while to work out that this really is summer!
There's lots of inspiration for colour at this time of year. I love Sweet Peas, not just for their delicate colours but also for their beautiful scent.



The colours in these beauties, inspired this roving, unfortunately while I can capture colour, I can't work the same magic on scent!


For today, how about some Honeysuckle?



Or some Nasturtiums (which also taste rather nice in salads)?



Or a Sunflower?


Of course all this growth also means plenty of dye material, there's a few fresh braids of fibre that just need to dry so I can upload them in to the shop.

Bilberries

This spring the hillsides turned lime green, the leaves on bilberry bushes when they first come out are bright green, if you painted a picture of it you wouldn't think it was an accurate portrayal...
A few months down the line and all those leaves have photosynthesised lots, and the bushes are covered with berries. We've always called them bilberries, but I think over the border in Scotland they're called Blaeberries, and from what I can tell they're related to Blueberries. I ate wild Blueberries when I was in America last year and they tasted and looked identical to what I know of as a Bilberry.

One of our regular dog walks takes us right past a big patch of Bilberry bushes so last week we took some boxes with us picked away. Even though we ate quite a few, and the dog did as well (she likes berries...) we filled our boxes very quickly. The stains on our fingers were quite spectacular, and lasted for a couple of days.



Well worth it though because the pie we made was rather yummy...