Being surrounded by the green of countryside does something good to us. I grew up in south London, where the predominant colour was grey! But green is the colour of Shropshire, especially now in midsummer.
When we are young we have to learn to consent to the goodness of life, and the greenness that surrounds me now represents that – goodness – and life for good, as I called this blog when I first created it a few years ago.
Consent to it all
To all its greenness
Life, nature, God –
So shall you grow and green
Your soul.
Looking towards Caer Caradoc and The Lawley from Brown Clee Hill, July 2022
Shakespeare felt that the British summer was never long enough:
“…summer’s lease hath all too short a date”
But however long or short it feels, I still think England in the summer is as beautiful as anywhere else on the planet.
Butterflies, too, have a rather short lifespan, but, like us in the summer, they really make the most of all sunny days, and on a recent visit to Brown Clee, the highest point in Shropshire, I came across this beautiful comma butterfly below.
The colours are so vivid – the deep orange contrasting so powerfully with black, reminiscent of the colour scheme of tigers! Looking closely, thought, and you can also see small patches of yellow. This beautiful creature makes the thistle look very drab!
Thomas Gainsborough painted this beautiful painting of his children chasing a butterfly:
The butterfly stays just out of reach on the left-hand side.
A recent walk up Brown Clee Hill, the highest point in Shropshire, took me to this view, and a silence so complete that the buzzing of insects was the only background sound.
In that settling silence, even the swaying of these stalks of grass seemed to have such significance.
Looking east from Brown Clee Hill, Shropshire, July 2022
In July, I waswalking by the River Severn in Shropshire and encountered a group of beautiful swans, as photographed below. They were a glorious sight and I tried to capture the moment in this poem:
I was privileged to find myself within a few metres of these beautiful animals today, 1st June 2022.
The intimacy of the mother and foal was so moving.
On my return, the foal had decided to have a nap in the warm June sunshine.
And then a wonderful comical moment as first the father rolled about, then his foal copied him!
The wonderful things about the Long Mynd in Shropshire is that you never know when you are going to have your next close encounter. On my drive home, I came across another family group, this time with an even younger foal.
The beauty of close encounters with Long Mynd ponies!
I have always loved to watch kestrels and their amazing ability to hover in the air. On a recent visit to Bettisford Moss, a visiting kestrel was a highlight, and this poem I wrote was inspired by another poem about a kestrel by Gerard Manley Hopkins, called ‘The Windhover’, which you can read here.
~
I caught that day
In his hovering over
~
Of the stillness lake
And my heart stirred
~
Simply for that bird
In flight
~
As if suddenly
I had joined
~
His light
Motion and unceasing
~
Trembling of the steady air
All captured
~
In moments
Of enraptured stare.
~
Bettisford Moss itself has a bleak beauty, with the occasional shrub and pond adding some variety to the landscape:
I was only able to capture a rather distant of that day’s kestrel:
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