Country diary: I’m immersed in the rich, chromatic aura of a summer meadow | Mark Cocker

Hartington Meadows, Derbyshire: Amid a complex reticulation of stalks, stems, blooms and leaves, the right response might be to drop down before it In his glorious poem Haymaking, about a flower meadow, Edward Thomas describes how the fiery day “had a kernel sweet of cold” and “the white empty road was lightly strewn/With leaves”. The heat here, however, was unrelieved, and if the road was empty, it was also liquefying at its margin. Sweat banded my cap and ran in the creases at the backs of ...

By Mark Cocker