Black and Gold

Cooling now at 10pm, dusk, the air full of sheep bleating and the occasional rush and scream of the swifts.  A fine sunset, gold-pink and pale blue and vast and free of clouds; another warm clear day tomorrow, hopefully.  We watered the garden as it has been so dry.  We had made a small flower arrangement of grasses and elder flowers, which in the last week has dried out.  The grasses have dried white-blond, as have the dumped cut grasses in the trugs, but the elders have dulled and dried to gold and a deep greeny-black, as if shot through with the gold, an astonishing sight.  And we forcefully trimmed the lavender to make them bushy and stronger.  My fingers smell of lavender from the crushed stems and leaves, the oily essence of the plant.