Jannie sits under the arbour. Find her. We can peep out and have tea whilst hidden from the birds. The roses have fallen off the top after I cut out the neighbour’s rose which was holding ours up. A late flowering azalea is in the foreground.

By the end of the month, the flowers are over, so the roses are given a haircut. I need one too. The plants in the pond have been cut back so we can see what lives in the water. What is the washing up bowl doing to the left of the bridge?

In Hong Kong we were given ‘lotus’ seeds. We groomed the ‘aliens’ in the pool room, then planted them in the bowls.

We reckon the smooth newt has eaten them.

A pair of young goldfinches sit on top of the Buddha’s mountain.

A blackbird pays a visit to the Buddha whilst he has a shower.

From the greenhouse, our tea house in the rain, we watch a crow being chased across the lawn by two diving crows. In the background is the pond and the arbour.

We plant two cucumbers and two tomato plants. The fifth pot is for a grape. Throughout the garden we have a watering system.

Our first cucumber flower.

Our coffee corner with highly scented jasmine above and hypericum in front.

Bumble bees love the flowers of the hypericum.

A robin joins us for coffee and looks for insects in the raspberry bed.

A fat pigeon waddles past to look for raspberries.

Jannie got there first.

A tit has a bath.

Jannie nears the end of weeding the bramble bed.

She has finished.

A bumble bee joins her on that pink bush on the corner of the bed.

A fox cub sits in the wisteria tree above the hole the parents dug.

Is the cub watching Jannie start on the rose bed?

She weeds fast along the lawn’s edge, then it is into the jungle in the centre of the bed.

I fight the ivy and brambles in the hydrangea bed. They are entangled with an ancient clematis on a trellis. I save the clematis and move the trellis to any ivy-freed fence panel of the fence under the plum tree.

A hydragea comes to life and others will follow. The fence is freed of the dreaded ivy.

My next weeding project starts under the arch which is covered by roses and a fabulous clematis.

The bed contains many other roses plus this sweet smelling philadelphus or mock orange and also shrubs from the past.

Early morning on the Thames and the Canada Goose families swim by.

Five goslings have grown large in the last month.

A parakeet watches the river and suns itself near its nest in the weeping ash.