Warm summer days with the sun heating the greenhouse and ripening the tomatoes. Picking the tomatoes, taking them into the house and after a quick wash, straight onto the salad while still warm and juicy. Well, I can dream can’t I?

Summer seems to have deserted us while I get emails from friends in California to say it is sizzling. I have to admit that I would find it hard to live in that intense heat. The weather seems to be fooling the robins who this last week started calling in their soft autumnal way. If you know your robins you will know what I mean. Maybe they know something we don’t but I hope they have got it wrong.

But let’s get back to tomatoes. Is there anything like the taste of a tomato fresh from the vine? This year I have grown a bush type tomato called Red Alert. It was recommended in the seed catalogue as possibly the best tasting tomato. What I can say is that it has produced enormous, heavy trusses that have ripened before my other tomatoes. The taste is different, I would describe it as a bit more acidic to the tomatoes that I normally grow but there is no argument that they are delicious to eat. However, my favourite for taste still has to be Harbinger which is an old variety that you are never likely to see on the supermarket shelves as it produces quite a variety of sized fruits on a truss. When I had difficulty sourcing Harbinger I tried an F1 variety called Shirley. Shirley are also an excellent tasting tomato and being F1 the fruits are of uniform size. Next season I will do as this year and grow Red Alert and Harbinger together to get early crops and the later delicious Harbinger.

Writing so much about tomatoes you might expect to see pictures of ripe fruits. However I also mention regularly that my garden would not seem to be alive without the insects buzzing around and the other various visitors. Here are a couple of pictures taken this week showing some of my garden friends.

The garden is still filled with colour. At ground level there are the Impatiens or Busy Lizzies that are so colourful and demand so little. I sometimes wonder why some gardeners turn there noses up at the mention of these little gems. Adding height to the borders and shining like beacons are the Crocosmia, bright red and orange through to yellow. The strappy leaves add so much structure to the border. Still to come are the dahlias, their buds are so swollen that they will be bursting forth any day now.

In my early days of gardening I wanted everything flowering at the same time to get mass colour. How my ideas and tastes have changed, now I like green and form from foliage with a succession of flowers providing highlights.

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