Sunshine after the rain

I asked for rain, and so it rained, lovely big fat drops overnight that freshened the world, so that when I walked out into the garden yesterday morning I could smell that wonderful scent of damp earth, which always smells like growth. The garden has soaked it up and smiled.

Then this evening this lovely tree at the bottom of the garden, which guards over the badgers in their nocturnal wanderings, was brilliantly lit by the setting sun. This is the tree I speculated, and now know is a walnut because it is just coming into flower. For some reason this gives me immense pleasure – walnut seems such an exotic thing to be flourishing at the end of a suburban garden in Sussex by the sea. It seems that it should be surrounded by Persian gardens with rills and still pools and arabesques of beautiful blue tiled work. A strange fancy I guess!