Wales in Summer

We had a lovely time in Wales thank you, and I have a couple of blogs to prepare about it for later consumption.

When the boys were little we used to drive down home three times a year so they could see their grandparents, and visa versa.  Fester’s entomological fieldwork meant we couldn’t go down during summer months, when the insects were up and about and moving, so we always went down during the October and February half terms and Easter holidays.  The trees were either dropping their leaves, or bare, or springing into leaf.  Hedgerows and fields were full of daffodils, both wild and garden,  primroses or early bluebells. 

It has been decades since I saw Wales in June.

The verges full of cow-parsley, Queen Anne’s Lace and ox-eye daisies. 

Fields heavy with long grass waiting to be mown for hay or silage. 

The trees all in full leaf, some in blossom,

And in the shady valley leading into Carmarthenshire the wood anemones and celandines shining in the hedgerows. 

Suddenly the summers of my childhood rush in on me.

Lying on the mossy lawn reading and sunbathing and pretending to revise.

The crooning of happy hens under the fir trees in the orchard.

How cool and fresh the house felt with all the windows and doors open.

Those few strange days when there was no fire in the grate because it was so hot and there was no need for warm water for washing.

Dad coming in from cutting the hedges smelling of clean sweat and crushed beech leaves.

Going down the river on Sunday afternoons to swim, 

or to meet Dad coming back from fishing.

The midsummer sunset blazing into the living-room window.

Swallows swooping in the daytime and bats flitting about in the evening.

A rising golden penny full moon looking as if God had just balanced it on the mountain top.