Harvest

A movie in the making

So it’s September the harvest is upon us and autumn beckons. This summer has been viewed through a time-lapse camera, London with its all consuming consumerism, conflict and conformity, work with its want it yesterday attitude and the salty squeeze of a holiday has conspired to keep me away from the cottage.

The city is busy exciting and hectic but sometimes for those of us with a natural bent, seasonally quite stagnant, the changes signalled by a state of dress and the amount of tourists attacking the attractions with digital weaponry. In sharp contrast, a few weeks of summer in the countryside makes all the difference.

I’ve been rushed and pushed through some of my favourite episodes, helpless before the onslaught of the seasons scheduling. Hints of promise and glimpses of what was to be were badly edited, cutting straight to the faded grandeur of some of my most reliable stars.

I caught the opening scene, summer lapped at the country lanes with its gentle waves of long grasses bennet and blossom, the garden filled with young green starlets ready and willing to please in their up coming roles. Swifts swallows and house martins took their place in the food cue, even the occasional optimistic bee started visiting the set, the next instalment was sure to be award winning but I missed it. 

No catch up TV or rewind facility just fast forward, so suddenly verges had receded being engulfed by hedgerows turned into untidy tsunamis. The lupins and delphiniums had let stardom go to their heads, loosing their colourful fresh complexions and being brought abruptly back down to earth. It was fortuitous that the slow spring had held back those plants that I had nurtured from seed and though only in a supporting role at the moment, show promise.

It is easy to miss the importance of the supporting cast and this is how it is with the fields, for some reason they have stole the show for me this year. Green and pleasant, turned to warm and welcoming before sadly jump to the last episode, cut and print. Mighty machines are shaving and plucking them, leaving golden straw bricks or perfect pills where once the thick scenery shone out. These are piled high to form oversized stacks or left to cast old fashioned shadows over the stubble.

There seems no time anymore to enjoy these fields and the fantasy’s we created there as kids, the giant building blocks were castles walls that we hid from our enemies behind, the haystacks monuments to prove your bravery by jumping off them.  Now they are gone as quickly as they arrived, yet more monstrous machines are invading the lanes and shaking the house to the foundations, making their noisy way into the fields to plough with surgical precision, peeling back the surface ready for new growth.

I'm being optimistic here because with all this fabulous summer weather the reviews have been good so a lot of the plants have come back for an encore and with all such successes I know there will be a sequel coming to our eyes next year, so look I forward to the spring previews.