Three Beautiful Things

1. I'm still marvelling at the freshening effects of the rain we're having. The weeds at the edge of the bean field are gleaming and glittering and steaming in half-eight sunlight, and the woods are dripping, cool and restoring as well water.  2. Peeling off clammy wet clothes and climbing into something warm and dry. 3. On my way to a poetry event, a friendly shout. We'll see each other in there.

1. Radishes don't often come with greens, and when they do, the leaves fade rapidly to yellow mush -- so today they feature in every meal. 2. I will never not love pouring hot water over a soup cube and watching the dried veggies and seaweed and tiny shrimps expand. 3. Evening message: do I want to walk tomorrow morning? Yes I do.

1. Thank-you cards crowd the shelf behind our meeting. 2. He comes back triumphantly with a pudding. The children, despite their great ages, are astonished that there could be a pudding on a Monday. 3. We've sat up very late, but I'm glad because it means we heard the promised rain falling steadily in the dark.

1. Really, the climb up on to the common is always the hardest part of the walk. 2. We cut across a housing estate -- busy with car washers and gardeners and hedge snippers and flags -- and dart down a twitten past the playground to find Georgian cottages squatting calm and cool around a spring-fed pond on the edge of the woods. 3. Around the next corner, over the next stile, we find a cool spot by the stream that is not taken. We sit down with a bag of sweets to watch black dragonflies that turn iridescent green when they cross a sunbeam. I think they might be Calopteryx virgo, otherwise known as 'beautiful demoiselle'.

1. Flutter of red -- a field poppy has dropped its petals. 2. Early supper and very quick showers -- we're getting ready for a night at the theatre. 3. Jupiter and Venus are tangled in the spires and fancies on Trinity's clocktower.

1. There is, after all, blackcurrant ice cream in the freezer. 2. Over the back fence, a few golden curls of honeysuckle invite us to a scented evening in a few weeks' time. 3. After carrying watering cans back and forth, the smell of wet dust on an evening when the ground is still warm.