Just like always at this time of the year, we have an infestation of fruit flies in the kitchen.

The red wine vinegar fruit fly trap is still my go-to solution and works pretty well. Except when the flies forego the actual vinegar and congregate on the walls and edges of the glass instead… Are they just sitting there getting high on the fumes or something?

The hydrangeas I planted last year have both survived. One of them isn’t doing any more than that but the other one is bravely flowering, in an almost unreal, eye-wateringly blue colour.

Some friends of ours have left town to spend most of the summer at their cottage. We’re picking up their mail – and plant-sitting their potted cucumber.

We won’t be getting many strawberries this year, if any, because I really haven’t been taking care of the garden at all. The tall grass doesn’t matter but I really should have replaced the nets. I didn’t, though, so now the deer have eaten most of the strawberry plants. Well, there’s always next year.

Raindrops on flowers may be corny but I still love them.

Today’s activity: mowed some lawn. To be fully honest, I sloppily mowed about half of our lawn. But last time I did less than half so the mowed area actually increased this time, which makes me feel slightly better.

When I planted this elder, I hoped it would be nice focal point in the front garden, and that we would be able to use it to make extra pretty pink elderflower cordial. The bush delivered admirably on the first point, but unfortunately not at all on the second. The sweet sap attracts completely ridiculous numbers of aphids, to the point that I don’t even want to touch the bush, much less use it for anything that will get close to my mouth.

For barely a week of magnificently blossoming cherry trees, we get weeks and weeks of mess afterwards. First there are the petals. Then the husks and stalks of the blossoms themselves. It literally takes weeks for the trees to shed them all. On the stairs they don’t matter so much, but the trees also shed this chaff on the deck and the furniture there. Every time I go out to sit on the deck, I keep having to brush the chair seat first. (And next we’ll have the green failed berries falling – and then of course the fallen cherries themselves.)

Still totally worth it, though. And better than pine needles.