Apparently in July and August it’s normal for your garden to feel a bit out of bloom. I found this out during a whinge to a gardening person about the lack of flora in mine. Annoying since honestly, all I seem to have done in the last five years (summers anyway) is plant stuff in it. I sort of dealt with the flower gaps by going a bit mental in the garden centre the other week, but to be honest mainly attended to the lack of colour accidentally during a separate quest to find comfy garden chairs. In short, here’s me boasting about my new chairs from Malika, as mentioned by Ros the other week.

As my mat-hunting co-blogger said, Malika is the place to go for nice African woven bits, those stripey teapot things (that I believe are actually traditionally used for washing your face and stuff), and various colourful things that are totes fashionable. I’ve gone there on a successful quest before and I’ll go back again I’m sure.  These chairs are quite petite, which is perfect as that patio is also small, but they’re also really comfy even for the longer legged man of the house. Much more loungey than they look.

You should have seen me in Brixton Village. The parking meter was ticking while I got myself into a small sweat moving chairs around, putting various ones in pairs to find the right colour combination. There were only 5 or 6 choices when I was in and Malika was making me more panicky with her talk of the hot weather causing a sell out, but in the end I just went for the two colours I liked best individually.

I’ve accidentally toned the burgundy one to my acer tree, which I’m more than a little bit smug about, and the blue one just looks brilliant from the window upstairs and in contrast to that orange-yellow crocosmia plant behind it. Malika does a whole batch of kids chairs, exactly the same but smaller and in a far wider collection of fabulous colours. It took every bit of self discipline to stop myself bringing two home but if you’re looking for that sort of thing I recommend it. These larger ones weren’t cheap – £49 – but they feel sort of different to what’s on the high street and a steal compared to those similar chi chi Marni lovelies.