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We arrive drained round midnight. The meadow is fantastical within the headlights. Six weeks of excessive summer season progress and the ragged post-lawn we left is sort of otherworldly. We dump our luggage by the automobile and discover by telephone torch. Tall grasses and different seeding heads loom alarmingly.
The early morning brings perspective and small moths shifting by way of flowers. Banks of chook’s foot trefoil. Thick carpets of clovers are alive with bees of each measurement. The plot thrums.
There are giant beds of yarrow in dusky lotions and pinks, nearly as if sown. Too many species I’m not sure about for my Collins Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe, I wander spherical with telephone apps: Search by iNaturalist, and PlantNet.
The names come thick and quick, conjuring up magical reminiscences of flower fairies, illustrated books from childhood – purple campion, goldenrod, maiden pink, blessed herb, child’s breath, viper’s grass, mullein pink.
There may be northern hawk’s beard, bristly hawkbit, hawkweed, hoary plantain. So many new-old names. The ox-eye daisies are quick going to seed. We’ll depart them. Although Henri has considerations about ‘untidiness’, she is bravely preventing her nervousness. I, on the opposite handhowever, am exultant.
Once more Denmark echoes Devon, or at the least the deep nation Devon I knew from childhood. Fertile floor for a younger boy’s overactive creativeness.
Butterflies are ample. Tortoiseshell, painted girl, meadow brown and orange tip all flutter and dance in numbers. The hedges have closed in, the oak has recovered. The cherry bushes are festooned with scarlet fruit, greater than ever earlier than. Simply ready to totally ripen in time for the chook migrations.
The sand martins and swifts are near leaving, buzzing low over the colouring wheat fields. I’ll miss them madly, although it’s the beachside peewit – lapwing – I’ll most yearn for. Winter species will arrive quickly sufficient to get enthusiastic about. We’ll be again by then. The grass meadow will wait.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Property, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
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