I return home from a weeks filming to find the garden at its most beautiful. Yes, I have lost some of my precious box balls, not through the blight that is ravaging the country's buxus stock, but through lack of water. My fault for assuming there would be rainfall while I was away. The rest of the garden, however, is everything I have ever wanted it to be. A tangle of nasturtiums, a tumble of cosmos, dahlia, cornflowers and marigolds, their stems entwined, their colours glowing. The light is gentle and calm, the air is fresh, yet there is a deep scent of ripeness, of plums ungathered.

The garden is a jewelbox of oranges, golds, creams and garnet reds. The leaves on the Winter Nellis pear are turning crimson and bronze. The nastutiums are clambering up the hedges. Flashes of shining orange amongst the almost black green of the yew. I want the garden to stop right now. To stay as it is. A garden in suspension. But I know that nature will slowly claw it all back over the next few weeks.