The Best Summer of my Life (A Distant Memory)
the rest of my pages & notes from the summer. It feels so long ago already! The term-time routine takes over so quickly.
This summer it all came together for us: the age & stage the kids are at (they were good friends! and they are generally positive and good natured); nice plans; Ross is in a term-time job so he had the whole summer off; lots of sunshine (sure, with an edge of climate-catastrophe, but if you can look past that). We had a such a fun summer. It felt really lucky and special. We are well aware that these elements may never align again – especially the privilege of not having to juggle work and childcare. Next year, the kids might be arguing, it’ll be raining, work pressures will be piling up. But we’ll always have summer 2025, when we were 6 and 3 and 43 and 38 and having the best summer of our lives.
Here are the rest of my sketchbook pages and notes from summer ’25 – a couple from July, and the rest of August. I shared my early July pages here and my pages from our Islay trip here.
1 and 2.
a couple of left-over July pages. I think the top one – house martins and a drystone dyke – is one of my favourite pages from this summer. I feel like I captured those hot-summer’s-day hazy sunsets, the constant movement of the martins flitting in and out of the eaves. Summer feels like it has a quality that you want to hold on to, but you can’t, it is fleeting. When the days are shorter and the weather is damp, you can’t believe it was ever really light at 10pm, that you wore sandals and swam in lochs. Just as, in midsummer, it seems impossible to fathom that, in a few short months, it’ll be dark by 4pm and leaving the house without a scarf will feel like madness.
3. allotment sweet peas
This is my second year growing sweet peas from seed in the garden and the allotment and I am totally hooked (although I am yet to produce any sort of decent drawing of them – both their shapes and their colours have evaded me). The little jars of sweet peas around the house have elevated summer for me. Frills and perfumes and pinks and the light reflected on the glass jars.
4 and 5.
drawing by the river with kids and friends.
The first riverbank drawing was done in one of our many heatwaves. That relentless bright and bold blue of hot summer days. Kids swimming in the river with friends. Cabbage White butterflies creating fluttering great shadows on my lap as I sat. It has been a bumper year for whites, apparently. That’s bad news for my patio nasturtiums, but a relief to see so many butterflies this year after last summer’s wipe out.
These two pages are definitely not favourite spreads from this summer. Trix added the purple sky to the second one – she might have improved it. But I promised to share my pages, even the ones that make my toes curl a little. And they prompt nice memories, which is all that matters.
6. Harvest Gold
watching huge mixed flocks of birds rising above a field being cut – gulls, crows, pigeons. Rising and filling the sky and then settling again. The kids love seeing the massive combines. This was the last weekend of our eight-weeks of summer together. Ross was back at work the next day, the kids were back mid-week. Everyone willing time to slow down and stretch out just a little longer.
7
And, just like that, school was back. Term started and we were back in the grip of school bells and book bags and uniform. There were nerves and some reluctance, but the restart went really well. I was relieved and I miss them terribly. This is Trix’s first year of preschool. I wanted to draw her in her perfect freedom, before we institutionalise her! A lion’s mane of curls and the bravest heart beating inside that chest.
8
August things: brambles creeping across paths, red rowan berries hanging heavy, deep shade. Plums on the doorstep from Brenda. Omnipresent woodpigeons. Tiny green acorns. Gold-edged leaves. Harvest gold.
The rooks are sitting on fence posts in the paddock. That seems to be an August thing. As are the cheeky cotton-tail bunnies in the garden, and the tortoiseshells resting on the gravel stones in the courtyard in the afternoon sun. It’s nice to have been here enough (seven!) summers, now, to be learning the rhythms of this lovely place.
9 and 10: summer oaks
our second visit of the year to the lovely Old Oak Wood at Dalkeith Country Park. We were there in April for bud-burst, and now August to see the trees in their splendid-green outfits, producing acorns by the bucketful. It is a mast year for acorns, apparently. The oaks all agree, via underground mycorrhizal network, to go bountiful and oh my what a treat for a 3-year-old with a passion for tiny treasures. Sitting together in the oaks felt even more precious now that term is upon us and our time together is more limited.
And a drawing of Piglet on a rope swing from earlier in the summer. I wish I’d drawn him a little more swooshy and a little less hanging-there.
There we have it, summer done and dusted. The start of September brought Calendar Launch week for me, which has been fantastic and humbling. I’m working through orders, and waiting for more calendar stock to arrive from the printers, so I’ll thank those of you who ordered for your patience in waiting for your parcel to plop through the letterbox. The Calendar takes these sketchbook pages and notes, and turns them into something lovely for your kitchen wall – a seasonal moment in a busy week. You can find the 2026 Wildlife Calendar here.
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