MIDSUMMER : Three Responses from Ethos Group Newsletters
1.Tony Kelly:
Green in the hedges, gold in the fields, and beyond lie the misty blue hills, their tiny trees silhouetted against the hot Midsummer sky. In the hedgerows, the blackthorn, willows and bullace, hazel and hawthorn still bear the fresh green of Summer's vigour, but they're full-leafed and luxuriant. And among them are the taller trees, the alders dark-leaved and pyramidal, the sycamores round-domed and bright, the sturdy oak and graceful ash. There never was a year like this for flower and fragrance, with the may blossoms in great drifts from the topmost twigs to the branches that sweep the Earth, and it's only now they are beginning to fade, and with them the clustered blossoms of the rowan.
But it's grasses that breathe of Midsummer, delicate and misty, their flowering and fruiting panicles swaying like an island sea in hues of golden brown, deep purple and green. Still the vernal grass scents the fields with its yellow-dusted khaki spikes among the misty haze of meadow grasses and fescues, and its sweet scent mingles and drifts with the Summer airs and fragrant white clover. Little valued by the farmer but delightful to the eye, the meadow brome stands tall and beautiful, like bronzy jewels in clusters hung on arching stems, and below them the rye grass, and everywhere and abundant the bright green spikes of crested dog's tail and purple panicles of the Yorkshire fog. And there's cock's foot too, but scattered, and timothy in pale green colonies, and floating sweet grass, long and straggly where the springs lie quiet underground.
The orchids are blooming in the Waun among the forget-me-nots, white and purple and strangely marked among the duller greens and browns of sedge and rush, and in the fields there are wide drifts of hay rattle and eye-bright, tormentil and daisies, and here and there the big ox-eye daisies and crimson ragged robin, and the golden flowers of bird's-foot trefoil and buttercups, of spearwort and cinquefoil, and in the shady streamside banks the trailing stems of bright little flowers of yellow pimpernel. There's speedwell too and stitchwort like little silver stars, and a few bugle still with their deep blue flowers and dark brown leaves. And there are some of the less welcome green things, the sorrel and broad-leaved dock, and nettles where the soil is richest. In the garden the ground elder is flowering, too invasive for many, but we like it and its leaves are good when cooked for dinner, not as a substitute for anything, but because they're ground elder, and nothing else has a flavour like it.
Life is teeming. A hedgehog in broad daylight hunts in the shade of the beech trees, and overhead the grey squirrels leap from branch to branch and twig to twig and onto the roof. The cat is well supplied with mice and voles and young brown rats and one night she came in with a small rabbit. Slugs are life and they are teeming too, especially in the evenings when the Sun goes down, and again in the dawn before he rises and they are all headed in the same direction, like a slow march, though an urgent one, to the safety of a nearby stone wall.
And at night there are fat-bodied cockchafers and moths in abundance over the curtainless windows, and bats which swoop on them as they flutter between the flat glass of the windows and the fathomless black of the night. There are white ermines in great numbers, and a few buff ermines, and later in the night the beautiful red and black cinnabars arrive to join them. There are carpets in variety, the pretty little clouded border, the white wave, silver Y, the small engrailed and scalloped hazel, the barred umber and the brown-tipped, bright yellow-winged brimstones. And two night ago, a rarity for our windows, there was the four-dotted footman, all grey and orange with its four litle black dots in its wings.
Spiders are big now and there was a beautiful emerald one on the nettles by the compost heap, and all the air is humming with the wings of flitting insects. Misty grasses, drifting scents and the low sounds of unseen wings... They weave a spell in dreamy sound and coloured wing and hot and hazy airs, a spell we call Midsummer.
-*-
2. Greg Hill:
As the days lengthen to the heat of Midsummer and fields fill with flowers so the green of the pasture meadows has given way to a glittering of yellow buttercups. Both these and spearworts have made the grass a green background to their bright display. I stand on a heath above the yellow fields and see the Sun shine on a far bay and the sea appears as a jewel in the cup of the green hills and the grey town. The boggy ground up here has a dry crust on it now, but there's bog cotton on it nonetheless, with its fluffy cotton-wool head, and marsh pennywort leaves lie dark green on the dried mat of sphagnum moss. Out of the bog proper, in the wet meadow, there's lousewort with its purple flowers lying close to the ground seeking shelter from the Sun. On the hedgebank among the heather and the gorse I find milkwort too, a strange flower this with an inner tube and outer petals all forming a single flower. The outer petals stick out as the flower opens, like wings from the base of the tiny inner tube. All this is difficult to make out as the plant is only a few inches high. The colour varies too. These are all pale blue, but further down the bank are some with dark blue outer petals (sepals?) and a white inner part. The outer part will later take the appearance of sepals proper when they turn green as the fruit ripens. The herbalists used to prescribe this plant for nursing mothers to increase their milk supply. In Ireland it is known as fairy soap, the idea being that fairies made a lather from the roots.
After an absorbing hour or so on the hedge bank I cross the fields to the wood which I came to see. There are stretches of this wood running here and there from the heath down to the sand dunes by the sea. They are the remains of an ancient forest long since cleared for farmland. The trees which are left - mostly oaks - are old, and there are other things which are old here too. You can feel it in the cool shade of the canopy: a green magic that only a great age seems to bring. I walk the woodland path admiring the ferns, noting in particular the way the male ferns stand up in circular rosettes from the woodland floor. Then I see something unfamiliar. A fern to be sure, but what is it? I stop. Admire the perfect form of it. The soft green and unfamiliar shape - a bit like a polypody, a bit like a male fern - hold me there spellbound for a while. Then I must decide. It is either a beech fern or an oak fern, and only later after consulting my book can I finally conclude that it is the former. But still I must go back to make sure. Further on I come to a place were the fields fall down to the sea on one side and the trees clothe the sides of a deep gorge on the other. By the field's edge there is cow wheat growing; just inside the wood there's creeping jenny, a flower whose deep yellow petals have always held a fascination for me. This is not the yellow glitter of the buttercup fields, or the bright happy yellow of ragwort, or even the golden richness of a dandelion, but a dark mysterious yellow that somehow holds the secrets of a woodland summer in its five pointed petals. Such secrets now are whispered all around me. I'm standing by the tree that I came to see. An old, lichened wild service tree growing on the very edge of the steep slope of the gorge. But there are suckers growing on the flatter ground of the field from beneath the bracken which forms a barrier between the grass and the trees. This old wild service tree, with its fragile offspring, may be the only one in the country. They are usually only found in very old woodland. In coming to see it I have seen so much more and the afternoon has passed to evening. The Sun now is slanting low over the green hills to the sea beyond. All is still after the long day. Fields as rich as butter darken their shades of green as the yellow light deepens to the cool of night. Already the Moon pales to whiteness in the clear sky. Soon the night is all blue and silver. Fair Earth, so glad I am to love you like this. So glad I am to love you.
-*-
3. Pat Blackmore:
The celandines and wood sorrel and other flowers that clothed the banks in Springtime beauty have faded now and given way to the luxuriant fronds of the lady ferns and male ferns and broad bucklers and the smaller, straighter fronds of hard ferns, still new and bright yellow-green. Not that there are no flowers to be seen, for purple foxgloves grow tall beneath every hedge, and columbine blooms by the gate, and the fields are scattered with butterecups and silverweed, and ragged robin where the Earth is dampest. Red campion grows where the trees cast their shade, and herb robert blooms on every bank, and the fields are full of the waving stems of flowering Summer grasses, and the leafy hedgerows billow out to meet them. I went out into the fields a few days ago and lay down among the sapling oaks, the Sun warm on my skin and the air full of the songs of birds and the scent of sweet vernal grass, and the hum of insects on the wing. All around the tall grasses swayed and sighed at the touch of the caressing wind, their stems spangled here and there with the white flowers of lesser stitchwort and the yellow of tormentil, and almost every stem of grass, it seemed, bore a frothy white mass of cuckoo-spit, each one a safe nursery for the baby froghopper inside. One tiny froghopper, newly emerged from its frothy home, crawled on my hand, a lovely creature of translucent yellowish green with black specks for eyes, and black tips to each of its slender green legs. A furry orange bumble bee droned by, passing on quickly to look for a more flowery spot, and then a wasplike insect settled on one leg, and a fly on the other, striped in black and grey and with dark red eyes. Insects there are aplenty, and at night a glow-worm shines like a tiny beacon in the dark, soft green and alluring to her invisible mate on the wing. At night, too, our windows are jewelled with moths, white ermines and common waves, clouded borders and a huge poplar hawk moth, drumming on the glass with its powerful wings. It was still there next day, sleeping on the wall outside the door, showing the velvety newness of its grey and brown wings.
The skies have been cloudy more often than not this month, but when the Sun comes shining through to cast his glory on the day, the denseness and profusion of the Summer trees is overwhelming in its beauty. Standing beneath a canopy of beech leaves where the light of the Sun filters through, making patterns of lighter and darker green, and where the roaming wind stirs the drooping leafy branches to make the sunlight dance and flicker on the leaves in an ever-moving pattern of green and shade, and where the arching fronds of male ferns and broad bucklers clothe the bank across the way, the beauty of it all is enugh to make me weep for joy and I'm lost in a green sea of ecstasy. Mab, sweet Earth, so green and beautiful, and Brirn, our Lord of the forest green, together weave your Summer spells and carry our hearts away in the magic of Midsummer.
Green in the hedges, gold in the fields, and beyond lie the misty blue hills, their tiny trees silhouetted against the hot Midsummer sky. In the hedgerows, the blackthorn, willows and bullace, hazel and hawthorn still bear the fresh green of Summer's vigour, but they're full-leafed and luxuriant. And among them are the taller trees, the alders dark-leaved and pyramidal, the sycamores round-domed and bright, the sturdy oak and graceful ash. There never was a year like this for flower and fragrance, with the may blossoms in great drifts from the topmost twigs to the branches that sweep the Earth, and it's only now they are beginning to fade, and with them the clustered blossoms of the rowan.
But it's grasses that breathe of Midsummer, delicate and misty, their flowering and fruiting panicles swaying like an island sea in hues of golden brown, deep purple and green. Still the vernal grass scents the fields with its yellow-dusted khaki spikes among the misty haze of meadow grasses and fescues, and its sweet scent mingles and drifts with the Summer airs and fragrant white clover. Little valued by the farmer but delightful to the eye, the meadow brome stands tall and beautiful, like bronzy jewels in clusters hung on arching stems, and below them the rye grass, and everywhere and abundant the bright green spikes of crested dog's tail and purple panicles of the Yorkshire fog. And there's cock's foot too, but scattered, and timothy in pale green colonies, and floating sweet grass, long and straggly where the springs lie quiet underground.
The orchids are blooming in the Waun among the forget-me-nots, white and purple and strangely marked among the duller greens and browns of sedge and rush, and in the fields there are wide drifts of hay rattle and eye-bright, tormentil and daisies, and here and there the big ox-eye daisies and crimson ragged robin, and the golden flowers of bird's-foot trefoil and buttercups, of spearwort and cinquefoil, and in the shady streamside banks the trailing stems of bright little flowers of yellow pimpernel. There's speedwell too and stitchwort like little silver stars, and a few bugle still with their deep blue flowers and dark brown leaves. And there are some of the less welcome green things, the sorrel and broad-leaved dock, and nettles where the soil is richest. In the garden the ground elder is flowering, too invasive for many, but we like it and its leaves are good when cooked for dinner, not as a substitute for anything, but because they're ground elder, and nothing else has a flavour like it.
Life is teeming. A hedgehog in broad daylight hunts in the shade of the beech trees, and overhead the grey squirrels leap from branch to branch and twig to twig and onto the roof. The cat is well supplied with mice and voles and young brown rats and one night she came in with a small rabbit. Slugs are life and they are teeming too, especially in the evenings when the Sun goes down, and again in the dawn before he rises and they are all headed in the same direction, like a slow march, though an urgent one, to the safety of a nearby stone wall.
And at night there are fat-bodied cockchafers and moths in abundance over the curtainless windows, and bats which swoop on them as they flutter between the flat glass of the windows and the fathomless black of the night. There are white ermines in great numbers, and a few buff ermines, and later in the night the beautiful red and black cinnabars arrive to join them. There are carpets in variety, the pretty little clouded border, the white wave, silver Y, the small engrailed and scalloped hazel, the barred umber and the brown-tipped, bright yellow-winged brimstones. And two night ago, a rarity for our windows, there was the four-dotted footman, all grey and orange with its four litle black dots in its wings.
Spiders are big now and there was a beautiful emerald one on the nettles by the compost heap, and all the air is humming with the wings of flitting insects. Misty grasses, drifting scents and the low sounds of unseen wings... They weave a spell in dreamy sound and coloured wing and hot and hazy airs, a spell we call Midsummer.
-*-
2. Greg Hill:
As the days lengthen to the heat of Midsummer and fields fill with flowers so the green of the pasture meadows has given way to a glittering of yellow buttercups. Both these and spearworts have made the grass a green background to their bright display. I stand on a heath above the yellow fields and see the Sun shine on a far bay and the sea appears as a jewel in the cup of the green hills and the grey town. The boggy ground up here has a dry crust on it now, but there's bog cotton on it nonetheless, with its fluffy cotton-wool head, and marsh pennywort leaves lie dark green on the dried mat of sphagnum moss. Out of the bog proper, in the wet meadow, there's lousewort with its purple flowers lying close to the ground seeking shelter from the Sun. On the hedgebank among the heather and the gorse I find milkwort too, a strange flower this with an inner tube and outer petals all forming a single flower. The outer petals stick out as the flower opens, like wings from the base of the tiny inner tube. All this is difficult to make out as the plant is only a few inches high. The colour varies too. These are all pale blue, but further down the bank are some with dark blue outer petals (sepals?) and a white inner part. The outer part will later take the appearance of sepals proper when they turn green as the fruit ripens. The herbalists used to prescribe this plant for nursing mothers to increase their milk supply. In Ireland it is known as fairy soap, the idea being that fairies made a lather from the roots.
After an absorbing hour or so on the hedge bank I cross the fields to the wood which I came to see. There are stretches of this wood running here and there from the heath down to the sand dunes by the sea. They are the remains of an ancient forest long since cleared for farmland. The trees which are left - mostly oaks - are old, and there are other things which are old here too. You can feel it in the cool shade of the canopy: a green magic that only a great age seems to bring. I walk the woodland path admiring the ferns, noting in particular the way the male ferns stand up in circular rosettes from the woodland floor. Then I see something unfamiliar. A fern to be sure, but what is it? I stop. Admire the perfect form of it. The soft green and unfamiliar shape - a bit like a polypody, a bit like a male fern - hold me there spellbound for a while. Then I must decide. It is either a beech fern or an oak fern, and only later after consulting my book can I finally conclude that it is the former. But still I must go back to make sure. Further on I come to a place were the fields fall down to the sea on one side and the trees clothe the sides of a deep gorge on the other. By the field's edge there is cow wheat growing; just inside the wood there's creeping jenny, a flower whose deep yellow petals have always held a fascination for me. This is not the yellow glitter of the buttercup fields, or the bright happy yellow of ragwort, or even the golden richness of a dandelion, but a dark mysterious yellow that somehow holds the secrets of a woodland summer in its five pointed petals. Such secrets now are whispered all around me. I'm standing by the tree that I came to see. An old, lichened wild service tree growing on the very edge of the steep slope of the gorge. But there are suckers growing on the flatter ground of the field from beneath the bracken which forms a barrier between the grass and the trees. This old wild service tree, with its fragile offspring, may be the only one in the country. They are usually only found in very old woodland. In coming to see it I have seen so much more and the afternoon has passed to evening. The Sun now is slanting low over the green hills to the sea beyond. All is still after the long day. Fields as rich as butter darken their shades of green as the yellow light deepens to the cool of night. Already the Moon pales to whiteness in the clear sky. Soon the night is all blue and silver. Fair Earth, so glad I am to love you like this. So glad I am to love you.
-*-
3. Pat Blackmore:
The celandines and wood sorrel and other flowers that clothed the banks in Springtime beauty have faded now and given way to the luxuriant fronds of the lady ferns and male ferns and broad bucklers and the smaller, straighter fronds of hard ferns, still new and bright yellow-green. Not that there are no flowers to be seen, for purple foxgloves grow tall beneath every hedge, and columbine blooms by the gate, and the fields are scattered with butterecups and silverweed, and ragged robin where the Earth is dampest. Red campion grows where the trees cast their shade, and herb robert blooms on every bank, and the fields are full of the waving stems of flowering Summer grasses, and the leafy hedgerows billow out to meet them. I went out into the fields a few days ago and lay down among the sapling oaks, the Sun warm on my skin and the air full of the songs of birds and the scent of sweet vernal grass, and the hum of insects on the wing. All around the tall grasses swayed and sighed at the touch of the caressing wind, their stems spangled here and there with the white flowers of lesser stitchwort and the yellow of tormentil, and almost every stem of grass, it seemed, bore a frothy white mass of cuckoo-spit, each one a safe nursery for the baby froghopper inside. One tiny froghopper, newly emerged from its frothy home, crawled on my hand, a lovely creature of translucent yellowish green with black specks for eyes, and black tips to each of its slender green legs. A furry orange bumble bee droned by, passing on quickly to look for a more flowery spot, and then a wasplike insect settled on one leg, and a fly on the other, striped in black and grey and with dark red eyes. Insects there are aplenty, and at night a glow-worm shines like a tiny beacon in the dark, soft green and alluring to her invisible mate on the wing. At night, too, our windows are jewelled with moths, white ermines and common waves, clouded borders and a huge poplar hawk moth, drumming on the glass with its powerful wings. It was still there next day, sleeping on the wall outside the door, showing the velvety newness of its grey and brown wings.
The skies have been cloudy more often than not this month, but when the Sun comes shining through to cast his glory on the day, the denseness and profusion of the Summer trees is overwhelming in its beauty. Standing beneath a canopy of beech leaves where the light of the Sun filters through, making patterns of lighter and darker green, and where the roaming wind stirs the drooping leafy branches to make the sunlight dance and flicker on the leaves in an ever-moving pattern of green and shade, and where the arching fronds of male ferns and broad bucklers clothe the bank across the way, the beauty of it all is enugh to make me weep for joy and I'm lost in a green sea of ecstasy. Mab, sweet Earth, so green and beautiful, and Brirn, our Lord of the forest green, together weave your Summer spells and carry our hearts away in the magic of Midsummer.