The countryside in August
Sarah Ryan follows a dusty path to savour the sights and sounds of a sunny summer day and sample its rich pickings
IT IS A bright, warm day when I leave the house. The sunflowers in the neighbours’ garden are so heavy with seeds that they can barely hold their heads up. After months of following the sun, they gaze down at their roots, the seeds as dark as the earth. The roses, too, are lolling, loose-petalled and floppy, on their stems. In the trees nearby, a flock of goldfinches call to one another; their characteristic song is a running stream of notes ending with a few liquid chirps, like drops falling in water. They perch restlessly in the uppermost branches, with their red faces silhouetted against a chalk-blue sky. As I approach, one takes off, then, they all do, flying out across the houses to a quieter garden.
Hedgerow foray
The road stretches dustily ahead, gorse bushes overhanging the hedgerow. I have lost track of which species this is: common gorse flowers most strongly from January to June, and, as soon as it fades, dwarf and western gorse come in. This one seems, in some way, to always be in flower, the velvety grey buds unfolding to a burst of yellow. Blackberries are out too: the verge is tangled with them, and it is worth becoming ensnared in the thorns for a handful. The first I pick is warm, and the soft flesh bursts in a mouthful of dusky, fragrant sweetness; another has the bright, sharp flavour of early green apples.
The verge is short and steep, so I step carefully back towards the road, my fingers ink-stained with juice. A thorn yanks at my shorts and, as I bend to extract it, snags on my sleeve. My laces are twisted up with cleavers and dotted with their tiny green burrs. A sharp prickling at my ankle alerts me that I have strayed too close to the nettles, now tall, ragged and laden with seeds, and I spring back to the roadway.
On the move
The sting soon fades to a tingling warmth as I stroll down the road. The fields along the other side, mid harvest, are a haze of gold and stubbled brown, and the verge, which earlier this year shone with tiny wild flowers, is now overtaken by yellowing grasses, thistles and late umbellifers. The grasses, with unkempt heads of light seeds, sway under their weight; the seeds are ready to throw themselves off with the next strong wind or fall to the ground in the belly of a raindrop.
“In the mute August afternoon They trembled to some undertune Of music in the silver air; Great pleasure was it to be there”
Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘August’
While some of the thistles are still in flower, many now spout soft, white plumes. It is the time for sending out seeds: after the lull of midsummer, things are starting to move.
Barefoot bliss
The house martins are restless; the froglets have absconded their pond. But the air is as warm as the heat rising from a toaster, and sweat dampens my armpits and prickles at my hairline. Turning off the road, I step onto the little overgrown path by the field’s edge and kick off my trainers. The earth is baked hard, and the dry grass stems are sharp, so I place my bare feet carefully.
The path passes between a tangle of brambles and thick stand of grass, which rattles with the stridulation of grasshoppers: a quick, half-second ‘chit-chit-chit’, then a pause and answering chirr. Bending down, I glimpse a Meadow grasshopper, Chorthippus parallelus, its colours perfectly matching that of late summer grass: green at the sides, with shades of sun-bleached brown on its back and legs. It lingers for a moment and then, in a movement which is too quick to see, it is gone, leaving just a reverberating stem.
“When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead”
John Keats, ‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’