This is the best time of the year

Late spring. Warm enough to shoo the children out of the house first thing, but not so hot as to be scorching. The cool, delicious dewy feel when you walk out of the house early on.

Everything looks amazing. In the countryside, all the verges are a soft haze of cow parsley, blended with pink campion.

Wandering around the suburbs, knocking doors, a thousand tidy much-loved gardens are in full bloom.

This is the peak for gardens. Though there are nice things that will come later, like fuchsias, this is the point of maximum flowering.

Grass is full of buttercups the exact colour of the cadmium yellow pencils we had at primary school. The cornflags are so pink they must be approaching full saturation of the cones in your retina.