For Sue*

I've found some.


* At the inestimable Quince Tree

Lovely roses this year

I

don't

think

the

roses

have

ever

looked

better.

Do

you?

Red sky at night

Cue: delighted shepherds.

On the other hand

Then the day grew hotter, and duller,

the gleam went,

everything seemed to be dusty and heavy,

even though there were no clouds at all,

the air was oppressive because of the lack of any breeze,

the stock-stillness of it meant

that you seemed to be re-breathing the same

stale patch in and out, in and out.

Tempers of children frayed, farmers,

their backs brown as walnuts

and wearing canvas hats, worked in the fields,

bringing in the late hay,

dogs lay about under hedges panting wetly,

and in the air, the faint, over-all smell of decay,

a seeping uncleanliness hanging about

in corners and oozing out of ditches,

lingering on the nostrils,

the smell of hot countryside without rain for weeks,

when streams dry up and all the dung-heaps

and drains and cesspit outlets bake in the sun.

Susan Hill goes on to enumerate the

sneezing weather and itching weather

clouds of thrips, tiny black thunderflies biting

sweaty flesh, midges, gnats, fleas, cattle-flies and horse-flies.

Britain is supposedly set for a two week heatwave 

with temperatures hitting 90º F, (32º C).

This forecast is hedged about with gloomy predictions

for unpleasant and oppressive heat

with high humidity and thunderstorms.

Is it really not possible to find and enjoy

 one happy interlude of summery bliss 

to feed off for the rest of the year?

Don a big sun hat, sandals and frock.

Live by the sundial instead of a clock.

Laze in a meadow, splash in the sea,

lie on the grass in the shade of a tree.

Sit by a lake, leave the house without coats,

row down a stream in a small wooden boat.

Open the windows

let in the breeze

silence the boiler,

do as you please.

Go to a country fête, 

Eat strawberry ice cream

Sleep in a hammock.

 A Midsummer dream.

I thank you.

Ever hopeful 2

Summer did come at last and, when it did,

it was one of those summers of poems and stories 
and country pictures,a once-upon-a-time summer,

it was hot day after day, week after week,

so that we slipped into a dream,

where we imagined it never ending,

a paradise world of long golden days.

Time stretched out into the pale far distance

and the mists that girdled the day about,

so that we seemed to be somehow suspended,

floating in them.

The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill 1982


Pictures from Great Dixter 2013 on a rare sunny day.

Ever hopeful

Summer began late, after a poor spring,

for all there were a couple of weeks of flowers and freshness,

spring was a disappointment, nothing more than

 a backlash of winter, as though the cold season

had a long, long tail that trailed slowly away behind it.

It was a grey, wet spring, dismal and cold,

and even the first ten days of June 

were fires - and lights-on-early days.

The first flush of roses came out on walls

and around doorways and porches,

New Dawn, Albertine, Gloire de Dijon, Sanders White,

all their glory was wasted in rain and scudding skies

and many of them even came down in blustery winds. . .

the fête was postponed,

and then held indoors, outings were cancelled,

picnics abandoned.

Cricket and tennis were played

under lowering, swollen skies on damp grass,

the soil was cold. . .

And then, over one weekend, it changed utterly,

we might have been transported to another country. . .

It rained hard all day on the eleventh of June,

and not again for weeks and weeks,

the sun bore down and the earth baked,

until September.

The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill 1982

The damsel fly, the feathers and the water lily

Sissinghurst rainbow

The charge of the white brigade

Impelled by who knows what threat,

pulled perhaps by a distant but urgent call

from the valley,

sheep started to stream down the hill 

towards us

their little cloven hooves thundering like race horses'

until finally they slowed to a halt 

and turned to examine us with their 

letterbox eyes,

passive and inscrutable.

Emergency? What emergency?

This little piggy

went to Borough Market.

Today it was suddenly summer.
 I didn't want to be wanting

in the culinary department.

I whipped up some meringues
and used the veg box wet garlic in a chicken and lentil dish.

Tomorrow I must make strawberry ripple ice cream
and aioli.
And there are the short-lived Alphonso mangoes to fit in.

They are all on my list of things to eat in June.

There's not a moment to be wasted.

It'll be autumn before we know it.
Have I forgotten anything?