Sweat peas are one of my most favourite flowers. They’re so delicate. This is the season to stuff a jam jar full of them. Pinks! Lilacs! Scarlets! “Once a wild plant, the bloom enchanted a Sicilian monk at the end of the seventeenth century, and he sent out its seeds across the globe, including to English growers,” writes florist, Nikki Tibbles in House & Garden. “Cultivated over the course of succeeding centuries, it became a firm favourite of the Victorians and has graced green English gardens ever since.” Here, Tibbles shares her tips for how to arrange sweet peas. Just make sure you give them a good sniff. Their scent is divine.

“The secret of blue is well kept. Blue comes from far away. On its way, it hardens and changes into a mountain. The cicada works at it. The birds assist. In reality, one doesn’t know. One speaks of Prussian blue. In Naples, the virgin stays in the cracks of walls when the sky recedes. But it’s all a mystery. The mystery of sapphire, mystery of Sainte Vierge, mystery of the siphon, mystery of the sailor’s collar, mystery of the blue rays that blind and your blue eye which goes through my heart.”— Jean Cocteau, from The Secret of Blue, Tempest of Stars.

There is a beautiful movement and sense of play in the images of Indian street photographer, Sasikumar Ramachandran. You can tell that the people in his photographs are having fun. There is joy and celebration. There is also hardship and sadness. Ramachandran captures the full human experience as he sees it on the streets and beaches of Chennai. There are 8 million people living in Chennai. Listen here to the sounds of Chennai.

In this mesmerizing short film, British documentary producer, Alex King shows us a very different Athens. Far from the charm, majesty and grandeur of Plaka, the Acropolis, and the National Garden, there is another Athens, one that speaks of ruin, abandonment and neglect. Former Greek National Opera Ballet dancer, Michael Doolan moves eloquently through the capital city’s forgotten relics; a hilltop mansion, an old drive-in cinema, and the Tatoi Palace to an hypnotic sound design created by Costis Kontos. “The stillness of these forgotten spaces seemed so surreal and alluring while the rest of the world continued on the rat race,” says King. “But now, we have become familiar with major cities around the world locked down and completely still. At times it has seemed like the whole world has become petrified and devoid of life, just like the ruins we shot in.”