Feeling parched

Spending more time outdoors and noticing the little things

The landscape is parched: a faded, pale straw brown that catches the setting sun and amplifies its golden light across the valley. I can’t remember the last time it rained.

The grass has faded from green to straw and crunches underfoot. Farmers have cut the hay and wheat early, and tidy bales now sit in the fields. I’m often caught behind tractors and combine harvesters on the narrow country lanes. For once, there is time to bring in the harvest, not the frantic dash of previous wet summers, when there was only the smallest window in which to work.

In the hedgerows, blackberries, sloes and rosehips are beginning to ripen, seemingly a full two months ahead of themselves. Leaves flutter down from trees too exhausted to hold on to them and in local Facebook groups, people are reporting seeing glow-worms after dark. This is peak summer in The Cotswolds, with added heatwave.

In my little village garden, there has been far more activity than usual. The grass we have left unmown is full of clover and attracts more butterflies than I have ever seen here in the past twenty four years. The bees, too, have been relentlessly busy for months, although whether that will translate into a bumper year for honey, I don’t know. I haven’t picked the blackcurrants to make cordial this year. I’ve left them for the birds.