All’s well here, I’m glad to say. Bettine has settled down, seems content and on my visit a couple of days ago, seemed more cheerful than I’ve seen her in some time.

Not that she’ll quite admit to that 😉

I received an interesting package on Midsummer’s day: my bottle of Summer Eau de Parfum from Ffern. I’d sampled their Spring fragrance whilst at Chelsea Flower Show recently and found their marketing sufficiently intriguing to investigate further. I added my name to the waiting list and - bingo! Lucky me! I really like the fresh “Tuscan Summer” scent and thought the whole concept very clever indeed. How long will I keep my subscription going? Who knows?!

For much of last week, we enjoyed the company of our friends, Gill and Richard, for whom this was a new corner of the world. We stayed pretty local to begin with, spending a day pottering about quite close to home, appreciative of the fine, clear weather. The views from Coaley Peak were especially good and for photographer Richard, provided a good source of inspiration.

The lovely weather made for a beautiful summer’s day at The Newt, too, where the rose-filled centrepiece was still looking glorious more than a week after being hoisted into place.

For the first time, on this visit we made it to The Beezantium, having remembered to book our spot when we arrived.

Most of the time however, we were happy just mooching around the gardens in the sunshine, noticing the companion planting in particular in the vegetable garden, where there seemed to be an abundance of nasturtiums on every row.

Here, the blue cornflowers and orange Californian poppies were good companions too, with their bright complementary colours shining in the sunshine.

A lovely lunch accompanied by a flight of the Newt’s excellent cider gave us enough of a breather to make it through the afternoon too.

Because we are open to all distractions here, believe me. I am merely thankful that our General Election will be over and done with two weeks from now and we don’t have to wait until the Autumn.

We really don’t have to look very far for the very best distraction of all, of course.