I returned from a week’s holiday to find the garden very verdant, apart from the vegetables, many of which have been decimated by the prodigious slug population. The potatoes have not grown and are going yellow and the broad beans are still small and although they have flowers I do not expect much of them. The strawberries, however, are ripening well and only a few are succumbing to mildew.

In the flower garden the roses are performing admirably. The hybrid tea ‘High Sheriff’ is in its beautiful first flush.

I hope I can save it from the black spot that disfigured it so badly last year.

Here are some ‘Harlow Carr’ blooms picked for the house.

Meanwhile ‘Wedding Day’ is doing what it does best, scrambling through a tree.