Midsummer at the summerhouse: 29C and a hosepipe ban. Small planes scan the plots for too-green grass. Water use is monitored. Drooping trees perk up with occasional light rain. The two-month no-mow meadow is alive with daisies, poppies, cornflowers, every kind of grasshead. I walk around with the Pl@ntNet app. I am near-addicted to the bird-identifier Merlin, turned to Sound ID, making sense of the chorus.
I cycle past the looping peewits, scan for the flickering skylarks, watch, entranced by the skimming martins living in the sand cliffs along the beach.
The wild meadow edge sowing has been hit by the drought. The poppies droop, then perk and throw out constant flower. There are many yellows: birds foot trefoil, lady’s bedstraw, buttercup, celandine.
The trimmed dividing beech tree hedge has filled in and blocked out the neighbour. We plait extravagant branches. The once 2ft-tall larch towers over the neighbouring oak, now more than 20m high.
The currant bushes are covered in more fruit than ever before. We eat the early redcurrants with yoghurt for breakfast. The blackcurrant will wait to be made into Ina’s favourite jam, breakfast memories of Henri’s mum.
We trim the meadow into island patches depending on flowers and grassheads. The ox-eye daisies are hip-high. Many of the poppies are more than 1m tall. There are maiden pinks, corncockle, greater burnet-saxifrage.
The apple tree is in fruit, the three espalier pears, too. There will be autumn puddings. Some fruit simply eaten on our early-morning walkabouts. Everywhere the thrum of buzzing, hovering insects feasting, though I discourage a droning hornet from making the roof its home.
The sea is close by. We walk to the sunset. Hear its call. Admire the spreading banks of beach rugosa, in whites and pinks.
The house has numerous vases with pickings from the plot. Pots of reds and blues and yellows, dusky green grasses. Bringing the summer outside in.
Plot 29 returns on 30 July
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
