Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire...sculpted by the elements more than 320 million years ago...

...that's 100 million years before the first dinosaurs walked the earth...

Lichen-covered wood rough beneath my arms

Dandelion clocks floating by on a warm, gusty breeze

The scent of hot summer grass, strong

A heron wheels above me, huge and prehistoric, while lower down the slope five dainty Cabbage Whites dance in harmony

Behind me, the sound of trickling water

From two fields distant, the bleating of a noisy lamb

Down in the valley bottom, the sticky air is motionless

A pheasant leads her brood of babies away from me

Past the home of Ronnie the Rocking Horse Maker where a branch of crinkled brown leaves overhangs the wall

And now up the steep slope at the other side, sampling blackberries as I go

Suddenly a stampede of raucous sheep across the hillside

This heatwave summer has brought hordes of butterflies to Dixon Hill.  Clouds of Cabbage Whites...vibrant Peacocks...and the rarer Wall Browns.

The Cabbage Whites flutter in flocks...as if the creamy sweet peas that climb the garden wigwam have taken to the air and are dancing.  As I harvest herbs or meander through the long grass, they erupt before me, flit about my head then bob away, leaving me laughing out loud with delight.

The Peacocks and Wall Browns are not so playful.  They are irrisistibly drawn to the buddleia bushes which have invited themselves into the cutting patch, where they're thriving and living up to their reputation.  Like bees to a honeypot...like butterflies to a buddleia bush.  At my approach, the petal-soft insects zigzag off only to settle moments later on another pendulous purple bract.  Gorging themselves on sun-warmed nectar...making the most of every minute of their too brief lives.

The silage bales are wrapped in sugar pink this year.  As if some passing giant has spilled his bag of sweets across the valley...

The moor is the colour of chaff this evening.  I don't recall it ever being quite this shade before.  Weeks of intense heat and no rain have drained the pigment from the landscape.

But today the heatwave broke.  There've been intermittent thunderstorms all day.  Hundreds of sudden puddles have appeared.  The parched earth has forgotten how to drink.

And now I'm chasing rainbows.  They're there in every direction, some vivid, some the faintest whimsy; some fading in the blink of an eye, others growing taller and brighter as the minutes pass by.  A son et lumiere performance of psychadelic curves as the clouds shift and collide and the light continually alters.

It's deserted here tonight.  Lately so populated of an evening, the rain has drained the land of people, too.  The puddles and the rainbows are mine.  All mine.

 (Walk taken on 28/8/2018)

Clouds choke the valley with mist.

The damp of the grass seeps through holes in my wellies.

In the Four Fields, a dog called Tom is being schooled for the nursery trials.

On the top road, two cats scale a wall at our approach.  One tail vanishes.  The other turns and, from the opposite end of a curved body, piercing eyes watch our progress.

We’re both tired.  We choose the short route.

As we wend our way down the snicket, a swinging blue bag of late blackberries grows heavier in my hand at each pause.  A seed sticks in my tooth.

I push A Shine Of Rainbows into the dung-spattered postbox.  And a birthday card for Vanda.

As the clouds begin to disperse, I tip the black berries into my cherry bowl.  Slice in ripe figs.  Spoon over just-now-delivered yogurt.  Sweeten with toffee stevia.  

Feast.

If you go down to the woods today

you’ll find burnished leaves

and shiny hips

and seed pods fit to burst.

Then you’ll carry them home

and fashion them into a wreath

that whispers all week

of that walk in the woods.

Foraging…gathering…weaving…binding.  The bounty of a single hour entwined in a circle.  Captured forever in an image.  A snapshot of Pennine bounty on one sweet day in history.

So loving this process!

Well I had to do something with all that ravishing heather.  

Besides, August - once the height of summer - has slipped soonly into autumn.  Which is fine by me.  ‘Cause autumn is my season.  The comforting, comfortable, colour crazy time of year.  The smoky, misty, toffeed dank time of year.  Abundant and beloved.

So to celebrate - this wreath.  Heather from the purple moors. Rowan berries from the hedgerow.  Rosemary from the garden.

Everyone’s saying it.  

Never - never ever ever in living memory - has the heather been so spectacular.  So totally magnificent.  So utterly….PURPLE!!!

It was for this very moment that someone, back in the mists of time, invented the word RESPLENDENT.