When we need a bit of brightness and sunshine, yellow is quite likely to be the colour we go for – maybe for clothes, paint to freshen up a room or as an accessory to an outfit.

It’s cheerful, bright, positive, clean, clear and is associated with the warmth of the sun.

I’ve heard it described as a “contact colour”. It attracts, is not forbidding and is the opposite of gloomy and dull (although muddy sulphurous yellows have a certain dark dinginess to them).

Main picture – Golden Anniversay rose in our garden (yes, I’ve been married that long!). Then clockwise – cowslip, evening primrose, dahlia-like flower in the Dordogne with carpenter bee, clouded yellow butterfly on scabious, unidentified wild flower in Texas (not the Yellow rose of Texas!) and flowering cactus in Texas.