It has been a busy couple of weeks. Well, busy in a high summer, low-key, somewhat retired sort of way. We had a small UK garden tour through on Friday and we wanted to present our best face while managing to find time for activities and family while our eldest child is home for a summer holiday with our only grandchild.

The tour is done and dusted and the daughter and grandson fly back to Canberra tomorrow. Come Tuesday, I may be wondering what to do with myself. Hosting a garden tour is different to opening the garden to the general public because we get to determine which route to take around the garden and it is possible to skirt certain areas if necessary. When the garden is open to all comers and people wander where they like and take as long as they like, everywhere has to be presented well. This means tours are less stressful in terms of preparation but it still takes a sustained effort just to add that extra polish. That is it for visitors now until October and November when we have a conference and a couple of overseas tours booked.

In-between, we have been out and about. Daughter has been keen to introduce her six-year-old to the experiences she remembered from her childhood summers. Taranaki beaches, she comments, are different to the Australian beaches that he usually visits. There is nothing but ocean between us and Australia and our beaches are often big, wild and with very little development – and usually without many people. And black iron sand, of course. Taranaki children learn from a very young age to wear sandals to cross the dry sand on sunny days because that sand heats up to a burning temperature. We know from past experience that if you take a dog with you, it is often necessary to carry it over the dry sand sections. Fish and chips at Urenui Beach are a family tradition, though I did remind the daughter that when she was little and we were a great deal poorer, it was in fact the cheap hot chips without the fish.

Tongaporutu has the best beach, in our books. We regard it as *our* beach. Mark’s parents built a modest little holiday house there (known as a bach in the North Island of NZ, a crib in the South Island). We lived there for the year when our daughter was born and spent a fair amount of time there when the children were young. We knew pretty much every nook and cranny. Daughter noted it had clearly become an Instagram location, to the extent that you can now buy a latte coffee or Kapiti icecream in a cone now. But the beach itself is large enough to never feel crowded, even on a busy Saturday afternoon.

The six-year-old was not as keen on the visit to the field of sunflowers, although a little mollified when he was allowed to cut one head of his choice from the picking field. But daughter and I were charmed, even as she commented that it was another particularly Instagrammable attraction. I don’t use Instagram but as soon as she said that, I could see how much of the set-up was designed for that perfect picture that others seek to post.

It reminded me of the fields of sunflowers grown as a commercial crop that I stopped to photograph in Italy, on the road between the garden of Ninfa and the hilltop village of Sermoneta where we stayed on a particularly memorable visit we made in 2017. I felt a passing pang that our days of international travel are likely over now but at least we saw quite a bit when we could.

No summer visit to our area is complete without an evening jaunt to the Festival of Lights in our New Plymouth city park – Pukekura Park. I admit that it is many years since Mark and I have been and it is certainly an upgraded version these days with technological advances in lighting and a bigger budget. It was a magical experience, albeit one shared with hordes of others. As a free event every evening, it is hugely popular with locals and visitors alike.

For those who want a bit more plant interest from my posts, look at this wisteria in the park, toilet sign and all. I want to know how they stop that massive trunk from getting infested with borer beetle. I am guessing there must be some intervention to have enabled the wisteria to get to this size.

Tomorrow I will be sad as we put our grandson and daughter on the plane to start the long journey back to Canberra. On Tuesday, who knows? It is summer. I may pick some lilies.