How can we tell it is high summer in the meadow? Of course the susans and the sumacs and the thistles are almost head high, but the real feeling is in the slight reddening tinge that turns some yellow flowers orange and some green one's darker. It is subtle, like the slightest breath of ripeness: that little deepening of colour under the sun. It is as if the colours have got their range, and are now into saturation. As if a young painter had really discovered green, and had been trying out all the variations, and had finally hit on the right shade. And when the thought comes that for each of these flowers this is their one chance to try out red, and orange, and yellow, and green in their lives, it makes you stop on the hills and ridiculously wish them well: touch them and say, yes, flower, that is how it is done, no flower will ever do that better than you, thank you.

There are so many summer subtleties: if you are out in the fields at daybreak, the dew does not lift off lightly as it does in early summer: it warms in place, like sweat on a body. The noise of the meadow changes: it is all much busier and more complex, but also fuller and slightly muffled because of the huge increase in understory vegeation. The raspberries have gone into deep purple, under darkenening green leaves. Some of the June flowers are just finished, like the earlier stages of some vegetal rocket, propelling the later flowers into bloom. And they all come, purples and browns and reds. Yes, the meadow is in full summer.