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The Door marked 'Summer'After the warmth and calm of recent weeks, this evening's walk in the windswept valley is like suddenly stepping into a different world. As summer begins to slide towards autumn, there's a familiar feel in the evening light, the colour of flowers and mown hay, the swish of the wind in the trees, the scent the mugwort and the feel of the tall dry grasses brushing against our hands as we walk.It's not that these impressions remind me of anything in particular, but, for me, there's certainly a nostalgia about the passing summer.
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DURING THE LAST six or seven weeks it has been warm enough for us to sit outside to eat our meal almost every evening. Now there's a wind from the north west. The dark mirror of the canal is stirred up into troubled water.
Swallows fly low over the rippled surface and around the cattle in the rough pasture. The greens of trees and bushes have now turned camouflage drab. Mildew begins to frost the leaves of Sycamore. Dull, cool greens make an effective backdrop for the purple spikes of Rosebay Willowherb by the canal and the Himalayan Balsam in the wood.
Against the general dullness of this cloudy evening the massed yellow heads of Common Ragwort almost glow in their own light.