It’s been a dreadful summer here in Lewes, UK but before I dispair at the weather forecast that predicts even more rain on its way, I’m going to enjoy a brief moment of summer pleasure out there in my garden. It rained yesterday, deluged in fact,  just after I took these photographs and the smell from the garden was almost sinfully exotic. The lilies and roses competed for dominance but they were joined by the newly flowering – and very late – heliotropes with their intoxicating vanilla perfume.  There are plenty more of these plants waiting to flower if the summer is kind to them. They should fill the garden with perfume long after the lilies have finished.

The roses are coming back in their second flush after being knocked around by all the rain in June and  July – the flowers, like this Benjamin Britten, look just as good as the first flush.

More perfume comes from the perennial sweet peas – so vigorous that I have to keep hacking them down…

…and then crowning all this perfume stuff,  the wonderfully rich fragrance of trachelospermum jasminoides or Star Jasmine a truly ever-green jasmine, or pseudo jasmine actually because it isn’t really a jasmine at all.  I hope one day it will cover one of my walls. It was everywhere I went on a recent holiday in Liguria, Italy but it is taking a little longer here to get as massive but all the summer rain has given it a growth spurt.

Time for a last look at those lilies, hope you can smell them from where you are. August can be very beautiful here in my little Lewes garden –  in spite of the rain.

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