That explosion of life which I mentioned in my last post continues, and is all the more striking for having been away for a while. It is that time of year when you could work outside from light breaking around 4.30/5am to its eventual fading at around 10/10.30pm, and night time seems only an illusion of rest and darkness, impossible now to recall the enclosure of winter nights. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of midsummer. We had about seven acres of ancient orchard and meadow behind the house, and took a hay crop off the Big Field (yes, it was the biggest of the three fields) every year. I loved the Big Field: it had a copse at the far end which was full of primroses in spring, and by late May, you could lose yourself for hours in the long grass in the field, hidden from view, and boundlessly entertained by the diversity of wildlife that so many of us are now trying to re-introduce to the land. In June, our farmer neighbour would judge both grass and weather forecasts and come and cut, and then a few days later bring in the tedder (a kind of giant rotating comb) to wuffle (fluff up) the drying hay. I wasn’t thrilled about losing my giant green jungle world, but the spiked up rows of hay-to-be were fun to jump, and best of all gave off that glorious summer smell as the clovers and multitude of grasses baked in the sun. At that point, meteorological tensions were running high: once the hay is baled you can cover it to protect against rain, but loose and on the ground it can be ruined, assuring yourself only of mouldy bales if it is not perfectly dry. I was fascinated by the baler, trundling up and down the rows with neat Lego bricks of hay popping out behind it, but you also knew it was time to find your toughest gloves. In small meadows like ours thirty or forty years ago, the hay was stacked in giant cubes, and after a day or so of additional drying, passed by hand from stack to trailer, to transport it to the barn. No mechanical lifters at a place our size, just manpower - whoever was around - and then what felt like an eternity of the iron-tight baler twine lacerating your hands, and the cut stalks scratching and itching your arms and legs as everyone kept half an eye on high-piled thunderclouds looming over the Malvern hills. It was knackering, but also incredibly exciting because it invariably meant staying up late - really late if the weather man said it was going to rain during the night - and seeing the stars finally come out as the sky turned to velvet in the west. If I was really lucky, had stayed up really late and worked as hard as I could, I got to sit up on top of the very last stack of bales with Dad before they were moved, and when Mum brought out a cold beer for him, he would let me have a sip and we would listen for the owls.
We have a very confident owl family here with us this year. We have regularly heard tawny owls calling in the wood since we moved in in 2019, but this year a nocturnal rendezvous has produced (we think) two owlets who think nothing of sitting in the oak tree close to our bedroom window shouting for their mother to come and feed them. Neil managed to locate them with a torch a couple of times, which showed the baby fluff like a corona around their heads, and in the two months we have been heard them calling, they seem to flit like little ghosts from oak to walnut to ash and back again, almost every night. Their teenage lack of volume control can be a little annoying at 3 in the morning, but it is fantastic to think that they along with little owls in the front wood now very much call this place home; if there could some moderation in the heaving buzzard population we might get a barn owl here too.
The meadow area of the garden here is not quite at hay crop stage, nor it is intended to be a food crop, but it is rewarding to watch the clovers and grasses coming up. For the last few months, our neighbours’ gardener has been coming to work here for a day or so every month to help me out, and I have had to spend a little time explaining that he cannot weed-spray the hoggin path because while I know the hoggin is the job that makes the labours of Sisyphus look like a dream occupation, I will not use any chemicals here, so hand weeding it is, and secondly, no we absolutely do not scalp every area of grass within an inch of its life because even a little more growth and some dandelions and daisies will help support pollinators. We are not doing any serious work on the meadow area until all the landscaping has been completed in a few years’ time - it is still our primary space for depositing the spoil from the works near the house, and having bonfires of laurel brash from the wood - but this summer and last I have spread wild flower seed in open areas, and Neil’s yellow rattle (dubbed the meadow maker for its ability to inhibit grass in favour of wild flowers) has started to come up. Evening primrose, red and white campion, teasels, corn cockle, foxgloves and a range of seeding grasses have replaced the primroses under the walnut trees, clearly defining the wilder area from the managed formality of the potager.
Near the house in the hot terrace beds, it is more a case of barely contained chaos than managed formality. Alternating rain and warmth has brought everything from roses to dahlias on apace, and late summer flowerers like the rudbeckia are having to elbow their way through geums and the starry bowling balls of allium christophii. This rapid expansion is also covering the gaping holes left by the baby rabbits who snacked their way through fifteen sunflowers and thirty orange cosmos, thereby leaving me with an expanse of dark planting devoid of the surrounding ‘heat’ intended for them. Lesson learned - next year I will wait until the seedlings are much, much bigger before planting out.
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