What would I do without the green market to take photos of?

White and red currents with a suitably sere leaf.

Squash flowers to be lightly battered ( but not by me!)

A complete meadow of black-eyes Susans and daisies and so forth.

Shasta daisies…

And then the edible flowers – photographed in their plastic containers which render them misty and mysterious. As a child I ate nasturtiums and honey suckle and maybe chomped on clover.

But the current fashion for eating snapdragons and chive flowers etc etc is more to do with looks than taste, I think. Others may disagree.

But they do look stunning.

As regards my own humble horticultural efforts on the roof: this year I’m attempting an egg plant (seen here). I have a great deal too much mint and a lot of sage that looks charming but I never eat. There is kale but I never eat that either.

And here is a tiny posy on my table.

Reading notes:

Green Thoughts by Eleanor Perenyi

Landscape and Memory by the brilliant Simon Sharma who grew up in Essex like me.

And a Famous Five  adventure by the much maligned Enid Blyton – just to see how she moves plot and conflict – and gosh, was she good at it.