July Morning

(I am sitting at the edge of some fields near Lilley)

Morning clouds reveal an increasing blueness from above their grey, rain-laden shrouds that hugged the summer landscape over night.

A warm westerly wind waves the oak branches above me, pushing eastwards to leave a dampened earth that begins to give up its moisture to the warming breath of air.

Grasses and cow parsley, with seed-heads gold and blackening brown, fill the verges and bow to the promising sun.

A slow slug delights on the dampness of a carpet of dying grass.

Wren, skylark, crow, yellowhammer, tits and others give their song to that of the breeze and a distant, high up plane.

Hover flies dart and zigzag around the grasses and black flies buzz their presence in an instant.

The golden barley, with down-turned heads and long fragile awns will soon be food for the growling combine. I hold and smell their presence, soon to dry to golden treasure, or so the farmer hopes.

The hedges, trees and woods are now an almost uniform deep green - like the single colour upon an artist's palette with just the shadows and highlights in separate tones. The greens are merging; the flowering plants are merging into their golds and browns. The highlight of summer is the culmination of the flowering season - diversity becomes one in the processes of post-flowering and seed-setting. Softness of growth becomes hardness of seed and brittle stems. This is a time of preparation and formation, an awaiting of the harvest of fruit and seed.

Purple is all around me in the subtle light that waits the full sunlight that will later bathe the land: blackberry flowers, hogweed seedheads, goosegrass seeds and leaves, thistle flowers and rosebay willowherb.