I had very little energy for gardening last season. I planted one peony and one plum tree. The above-ground parts of the peony turned yellow and died earlier in the season than most perennials, so I was worried that I’d let it die by not watering it enough. I’m happy to see it’s back this year. I didn’t kill it after all. (The little plum tree is also still alive.)

Summer afternoon rains make rainbows in the perfect direction to be seen from the living room.

Nysse is, on the one hand, hungrier than ever. Spending many hours outdoors every day, he works up a good appetite. We’ve had to increase his portions because he was losing weight.

At the same time he is more relaxed than ever about his food. He now actually leaves food when he is done. He doesn’t go crazy any more when he sees us get out the cat food, or try to climb up my body to get into the food container. I used to have to measure up his food while holding all the containers in the air in the middle of the room so he wouldn’t be able to reach him. Eric used to just shut himself in the pantry for serving up the cat food.

Now we can both trust each other more about the food. Nysse can trust that he will get food and the food will not run out. We can trust him to ask for food only when he is actually hungry.

Cowslips are one of my favourites in the garden. They’re happily perennial here and turn up reliably year after year. One year I moved a bunch of them to get them more concentrated – instead of one here and one there, I now have a small cowslip meadow. In fact I even have three cowslip meadows, but only one of them is right next to the deck and nicely visible from the house.

I’ve been waiting for them to spread by seed. I wait with mowing the grass in that area until they’re all done flowering. But it doesn’t seem to be happening much. The clumps are slowly getting bigger, though.

In most clumps, some of the plants have much shorter stems. I wonder if it’s the babies of the clump, old enough to flower but not yet old enough to grow to full size.

They look good against a cloudy sky.

I just can’t help myself.