I was reading online a few days ago about how the dry summer had revealed the historical secrets of the English fields. When viewed from above the parched land told stories of what the fields were used for in the Iron Age via shapes and shadows in the crops.
The dry earth has given me a different perspective, too. We've had crunchy grass, patches of scorched black - I'm thinking this was where the buttercups were - leaves falling from the trees weeks and months before schedule.
The earth had opened, great cracks with the threat of wasps nests in the dark crevices (true fact from last year - the dog put her nose in one of these cracks and a swarm of wasps chased her and me back up the field. Not a fun day.)
Even without the threat of wasps these cracks reach out to deliberately to trip you up, to make your ankles bend unnaturally as you walk over them.
It makes me bad tempered as I walk around. The furnace sun, the insect fear, the lack of lushness.
I didn't like it. I didn't like what my oasis had become. It was unfamiliar. Alien. Not my space.
So when the rain finally came I wasn't sorry. And in a short time the lawn has returned to a rich green. There are still patches if you look closely. But, from a distance all has returned to the lush beauty of which England is famed.
But. (Of course there's a but.)
The field still doesn't look like mine. It still seems unfriendly. Standoffish. Brittle. Slightly threatening.
I don't want to visit. I'm reluctant to take my usual circuit around. This is in massive contrast to the me from earlier this year who'd be pausing every other step, examining every spark of life.
And I don't know how I feel about this.
