Up close and personal

There is apparently only one more day to go for this fantastic heatwave (it's warmer in Scotland than Sicily!!) so today I gave up almost completely on pretending to still do something useful and instead got down on my hands and knees to take some photographs of small but very daintily formed flowers.

Fortunately there is little traffic on our one track country lane because I must have looked ever so slightly ridiculous laying flat out on the grass with my nose (and camera on macro setting) in among the flowers. I'm not sure what these red flowers are called but they are an alpine variety and grow in a shallow trough.

These of course are Lily of the Valley flowers and I do so wish Blogger provided a smell button so you could share in its old-fashioned but oh so lovely perfume.

And this is the very humble daisy, en masse, which will soon be gone as John is planning to mow the lawn in the next few days. We have an on-going battle as I like to keep all the wild flowers and self seeded plants in the garden, including in the grass, whereas John is a very much more organized gardener (or really if I'm honest, organized human being!). At the moment I tend to get my way as he does not have enough time to get it all done just so, but once he is retired in September I will have to put up much more of a fight!

The daisy is known as Madeliefje in Dutch which really is untranslatable (the last bit liefje means little love) but it is such an evocative and nostalgic word for me, reminding me of the fields of my youth and of course making endless daisy chains!