If there is an opposite of jaundiced I am that person. I love the season of screaming yellow fields. It’s like living in a Mondrian. It is impossible to convey the extraordinary acid brightness of the three fields of rapeseed that sit just beyond our field, undulating all the way down towards the town. You forget it’s there then look up from the sofa for a moment and it slams into you like the wall to another dimension. It sits like police tape in a stripe across the end of Lyra’s preferred shady walk, primary colour at its most brutal. Keith and my mum are not fans, too garish, but Lachlan is with me in team jaunophile. I spent the peak dancing years of Acid culture in the trainee twighlight zones, mining document piles for sense. On one of the few occasions I made it out, blinking, into natural light I stood in a cashpoint queue, in utter confusion, behind a girl with fairy wings and a whistle. Now, standing at the top of the hill looking down on a mass of yellow squares, I can totally see the point in dancing for 24 hours straight in fairy wings. Still not entirely sure about the point of the whistle though…..
Dancing joie de vivre has infected everyone it seems. Down on the lake the male swans are all bobbing up and down and waving wings like aquatic dancing cossacks and our own Catrinona the cow has learned to limbo. She was found last week mysteriously inside the fence around our solar panels. The fence was still up. I was pondering this mystery when she shimmied ( belly danced??) under the wire, ran around to the other end and, with all three sisters now watching in an arms folded – girl I could do better than that way” did it again. At that point Keith went off (at I must say a rather nonchalant pace)with a wheelbarrow for the battery for the electric fence (which was protecting the spare bales from surreptitious snackage) whilst I tried to dissuade all four down from further incursions on the dance floor. We have since invested in another battery which Keith assembled so efficiently he has several spare parts left over…
In other news, rhododendron envy season has commenced at Dundock woods and wild flower and butterfly season is kicking off in earnest, with ground ivy and forget-me-nots joining the primroses and wild garlic. I’ve spotted a few peacocks but they were too fast for me. The small tortoiseshell must suffer from a little nominative determinism. On the home front, discovering that mum has been eating my peanut hob nobs for breakfast I have made a muesli version so she can carry on with a clear conscience. She is keen but the boys demur as they aren’t enough like flap jacks. Reader, this is quite deliberate – I do not like flap jacks. Anyway here’s the recipe – see for yourself. I also finally finished mum’s springtime crewelwork mat and am pondering what to do next. As I have too many ideas no progress whatsoever has been made. I did, though, tidy up the workroom to make room for a new mess, so there is that. Pingu and Dobby would like me to note that they have upped their productivity and are bringing in a rabbit a day now. I spotted Pingu catching one when I was watering the greenhouse this morning – boy is he fast. I am now steeling myself to go and check the bedroom for dismembered bits…..Lastly, I was going to spare you more garden photos, but it has been so lovely the last couple of days I can’t help myself.
