The Swenglish Home

Summer greetings...

Dear blog readers,

Have you entered the summer "lull" yet, 

the lazy days,

 the stopping what you are doing long enough to spot the most wonderful of growing inspiration, 

of "Nothing Is Impossible" and two fingers in the air to anyone who says 

poppies cannot grow out of a dry stone wall if they feel like it...

Does you laundry smell wonderfully fresh from spending hours in the light summer breeze, weaving more than fresh air into the thread count of the sheets, storing life and new beginnings in the same...?

Is your home-made elderflower cordial drunk yet, 

drunk with sparkling water to the tune of the ice cubes clinking and clanking in the glass,

drunk till the last drop of golden summer flavours is devoured 

and the longing for next year's harvest has begun...?

Has your vine started producing grapes yet? 

And more importantly... 

- have you stopped to smell the roses?

I confess, I am not quite there yet. 

My work has not gone on holiday, so neither have I.

But occasionally, and eagerly encouraged by my youngest son,

I do stop to smell the roses.

Literally.

My son says:

"Mamma, you have got to come here and smell this one. It smells like lemon."

Although he says it in Swedish. 

"Den luktar citron, mamma!"

"Oh, and come here. This one smells like raspberries!"

So I stop.

And I smell.

And he is right. The yellow rose does smell a little bit like lemon, the red one like raspberries.

So I pick one, put it on the table.

The scent of lemon, summer and sweetness fills the room.

Wraps us all in the arms of summer, despite the boys still having a week left before school finishes and my having more work than I dare to think about...

Lemon. Roses. Raspberries.

Sometimes that is all it takes.

Helena

♥