Friday 28 May 2010

More White from Blacka


Essential English countryside is a good topic for late night conversation before the fire in winter. What should the ideal ingredients be? Some of them are here to be enjoyed today near the end of May. For the record my choice would include a good mix of wildness with 'overgrown' vegetation typified by the swelling of the huge bilberry beds here. Also woodland newly clothed in late May foliage giving the perfect acoustic for elegant birdsong from the blackbird and assorted warblers. I'm rather fond of traditional good-looking farmland (without plastic bales, polytunnels and decaying farm machinery please). And I remain a fan of the patchwork of fields bounded by hawthorn hedges in flower. Odd bits of wildness should be scattered around.
It's on the uplands that I want to see more wild and romantic scenery. Let the trees grow and take the sheep into the lowland, they'll be much happier there. Today the hedge fringed fields are visible to the south with white blosssom. And other spaces have more random effects. All looked rather good. And when yellow appeared it was gorse, not the ghastly oil seed rape.



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