June arrives and the fine weather goes and is replaced by much needed rain. The trees which were bare branched only a few weeks ago are resplendent with every shade of green and the yellow rapeseed fields give the countryside the appearance of an artist's palette. Colour is everywhere, especially in gardens aflame with the early summer colours. Every shop is loaded with bedding plants of every hue and shade. In short, in spite of the rain, summer has definitely arrived and Perthshire is one of the most scenic places to enjoy it.

The hanging baskets are nearly ready for collection, and a fine job has been done by my most favourite garden centre, Ferngreen, near Campmuir. Asked as usual what colours I preferred I replied, greens, oranges , yellows, and reds, and so they have been done. It is lazy gardening I suppose but Ferngreen do them much better than I ever could and they have the advantage of being able to get them established in polytunnels.

The blue himalayan poppies won the race into bloom, but they are about to be completely upstaged by the hollyhocks who have grown to fine height and should be in bloom within a few days. I must confess to having done very little gardening - a little weeding, a fair bit of shrub trimming and repairing a garden arch, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Everything is growing like the proverbial weeds, which I suspect a lot of them are. My excuse is that they are easier to weed out when you can get a decent grip on them.

There is also a family of field mice somewhere in the green jungle. The evidence is conclusive and includes nibbled bird seed bags and a rather embarassed mouse who simply fell out of a wall with a clatter at my feet and then strolled rather than ran behind the delphiniums.

A wee timorous cowrin beastie he was not.

Lastly I have concluded that the advantage of a very small garden is that mowing "the lawn" isn't really very necessary. After all why not let the stuff grow? I will only be increasing my carbon footprint by cutting it - just add up the mileages to the garage for petrol for the mower or the equivalent cost of using an electric mower. Calculate the carbon dioxide produce by the decay of the grass cuttings! Why not just let it grow and walk on it if you need to? Sooner or later winter will arrive and it will die off
anyway and keep the minerals and such for use next year.

Ironic too that Mr Brown should be reaping the profits of higher oil, gas and petrol prices, largely at our expense. Perhaps he should change his name.