What things?
As I head out from our back yard, I walk past the allotments for Ditchfield Cottages. Our neighbors' gardens are on my left. Some are productive but small, some a little shaggy, but Tony's garden is outstanding: all is order, fecundity, health. We think of him as Mr. MacGregor because he dresses just like him, in a tweed vest and tweed cap, tending his vegetables with seriousness, and guarding against the ubiquitious rabbits. Everything is draped in rabbit-proof netting. His peas are bearing luxuriantly, his broad beans are heavy with produce, his brussel sprouts are standing tall. Not a weed of even the smallest variety is in sight.As I walk down a footpath I see fieldcorn planted on the right, only about ten inches tall. Long way to go. I go through the stile and turn right, toward the woods. On my left there is a small farm with a dozen sheep, recently shorn, who are near the path and gaze at me. Down I go through a skinny opening between the hedges that are taking over. Around this part of the world, it isn't keeping up with the Jones', it's keeping up with the hedges. Going through another gate the view opens up to another corn field, grown in soil that looks like ground up bones. The flintstones are encased in a chalky soil that is actually white. It looks hopelessly infertile, but that's apparently an illusion.
In the next field, there are bales of hay all over the field. This looks recent. Walking along edge of the field, I notice a new incarnation of wildflowers, all different since my last walk this way a month ago. Now there are purple thistles, and tiny morning-glory-like pink flowers creeping along the edge of the path, and Queen Anne's Lace, and lavender-colored flowers like a tall clover.
At the end of this field there is a field of barley. The last time I saw the stalks, they were green and standing bolt upright with beards waving. Now, things have changed; their heads are full and heavy and bent over. The field is nearly golden, and the feathery heads are making an exquisite pattern, thin lines in a rough and tumble collage, with the valley of trees and tiled roofs beyond.
I go through another gate and into the woods. By day, this wood is dappled and chirpy with birds. But now, it is hushed, and very, very dark. I go in fifty feet and then there's a strange scuffling in the underbrush. I'm too old to be scared but I am scared. How creepy the woods have become...! I turn back to the grain field, trying not to look back, but I do and there's nothing there, of course.
Now the bells of the parish church begin to sound. This is bell-ringing rehearsal night. They only have six bells (the nieboring village has eight), but they've come up with every possible pattern. I hear the bells and think of our little stone church, and imagine the ringers hauling on the red, white and blue fuzzy ropes. I feel glad I don't have to spend the night in the woods.
Nearing the back of our cottage, I notice that two apple trees along the path are full of green apples. We've been eating ourselves silly on English strawberries, which are good, plentiful and cheap. It looks as though in a couple of months we'll be tasting English apples.
The evening is winding down. It's nine fifteen, three days past the solstice, and it will be light until ten thirty. The air is soft and mellow. A couple of mourning doves are doing their usual dusky cooing, and all kinds of birds are beginning their final burst of twittering and chirruping, as the sun sets; what are they talking about?
ellie@together.net
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