Good year for the roses - as Elvis sang (Costello)

It is in fact the most incredible year for roses as well as all other blossom - here certainly, and I hope where you are too.

The crumbling garage is blessed with a pale yellow tea rose which ambles slowly up its stonework, usually giving up with an almost audible sigh as May moves towards June. This year it is as showy as a Liberace rhinestone suit - blossom deeper in colour, almost golden with a faint scent of darjeeling. I've tried to capture its beauty on film but it's almost impossible - maybe just something to place in the memory drawer of the mind.

All flowers seem twice as big as usual. We must have had enough rain, no heavy frost and sufficient sunlight over the last couple of months. I'd love it to stay like this but glancing at the garden hoses while trying to locate a paintbrush this morning, I suspect we'll be in for another summer of heat and dryness.

Camper vans have started to emerge like angular, swaying white snails along the main route to Saumur, the Loire already at a late summer level. Business as usual while the climatologists rightly state for perhaps the 40th year or so that we are heading in a more than worrying direction.