This morning, at dawn, it felt like autumn is nearly upon us. Early.

In less time than it took for the kettle to boil for our first cuppa, the nearly impenetrable mist filling the valley below us had cleared enough to see distant hill tops. There was a welcome chill in the air. The surfaces and foliage were soaked in dew. It felt good, after what has seemed like an endless summer, following our endless, bright sunny spring.

It’s not just my imagination, either. The Met Office confirms with its regular monthly updates, just how unusually benign the weather has been this year. We are at least fortunate to have had enough rain fall through June to keep dire water shortages at bay, although looking ahead there seems no chance of significant rainfall in the outlook for at least a fortnight.

At least our juvenile trout or sea trout are hanging on in the four pools which act as holding refuges on our section of stream. I read recently that fish are particularly sensitive to heat stroke, and likely to die when water temperatures rise above 30 degrees C. So critical is this that the Wye and Usk foundation recently persuaded National Resources Wales to release more water from the drought depleted reservoirs of the Elan Valley, to prevent this critical temperature being breached, many miles downstream in the river Wye where salmon were holed up. Waiting for rain and raised water levels to allow them to complete their spawning migration trip upstream.

The striking feature here in June and July was how much warmer most of the nights have been, and often how little wind there has been. It seems there’s now a summer alternative to dunkelflaute, for Europe and our own UK renewables-skewed electricity generation system to have to manage – Hitzeflaute. A heatwave with plenty of (daytime only!) sunshine, yet little wind and high temperatures.

How sad as well that all those people, who for various reasons seem to have given up on holidays in Wales over the last couple of years, have missed out on some of the best months of weather here in living memory. We’ll no doubt have to wait a couple of years to see any official data on whether more people did travel West this year for overnight accommodation stays, but any possible boost is going to be too late for some of the large local tourist businesses which have closed over the last 6 months, or gone into administration.

However the recent heatwave which even made it to our part of the world in mid-July did make for wonderful manual hay making. Our sheds are as full as we want them to be, and we still have masses of areas full of flowers and seeds to cut, either for green hay for ourselves or anyone who fancies some. But for once, I’m relaxed about this prospect. The actual main push and harvest came in an intensive week when, with both high temperatures and sunshine forecast, we’d cut and gradually cleared large sections of both our upper and lower meadows. The downside to the hot, sunny but humid and often windless conditions was trying to pace our physical activity to avoid heat stroke and exhaustion.

We discovered that as well as relying on chilled bottled water, and the relative cool of the house to retreat into after a session, immediately stripping off from our dripping wet clothes into just undies helped the sweat evaporate. And our bodies cool down. The wet clothes were put onto the car bonnet, and by the time we’d rehydrated and were up for another session, they were bone dry and warm enough to feel like they’d just been crisply ironed – a strangely enjoyable sensation.

These were long, tiring days, which left little energy for any creativity. However, there was a bonus boost provided by the sight of a spectacular, nearly full and pink, ‘Buck’ or ‘Salmon’ moon rising to the South on July 9th. I’d only seen this as a fluke after going outside at 9.40 pm to close an external shutter door which I’d opened for the first time in years to allow cool air to flood the house at the end of the day. Five minutes later, and cloud began to hide it, and the colour had gone. Remarkably, we managed to keep downstairs around 18 degrees C throughout the day despite external ground surface temperatures hitting 45, and air temperatures 29, by keeping all windows and doors closed and curtained all day until late in the evening. When, once the outside air temperature had fallen below that in the house, everything was opened up. A process repeated around 5.30 am, for a couple of hours.

A day after the above moonshots and despite being exhausted from haymaking, I climbed up longevity hill once more, and sat in the hut, waiting and scanning the horizon for the full moon to rise. About 4o minutes later, and further East than the day before. In a completely silent landscape, this was a very special moment, although as is often the case, the salmon pink colour did not return to grace this correctly full moon.

With all this toil behind us, and after an extraordinary and unexpected inspirational visit this week, (which I’ll write about a bit more next time), I was at last able to tackle a poem I’d been struggling to write for weeks. I just needed a line to come into my head to get me going. As usually happens, this arrived after a very early awakening in the (unfamiliar) bed we were staying in at Fiona’s mum’s.

The few words at around 4.00 am which my brain cells forced into consciousness were:

Rich, complex lilac-laden booze.

Not perhaps the most likely phrase, but a perfect eight syllable descriptive sound for what I had in mind.

I roughed out a few more lines in the tiny notebook Fiona always has tucked into her handbag, whilst lying in bed with a noisy wood pigeon serenading us from the roof top. It took another 3 weeks for me to sit down and seriously work it out – before time and life took it away from ever becoming a semi-complete poem. Here it is, probably still needing more tweaks, and for anyone who hasn’t read the previous blog post, there’s relevant background information in that. (Although it seems a lot more is now known about the importance of fungal interaction with orchid seed for successful germination, than when I wrote this piece about fungal pelotons about 10 years ago).

 

Roving Moth and Static Butterfly

 

Ghost-flagged galleons, scattered, list.

Lost flotilla, adrift in this ocean, bright with flotsam flowers

Common beasties – fox, cubs, cat’s ears

Dance amongst sweet vernal shells,

Those backlit, white gold, wind-whipped waves

Top Common Spotted hybrid masts,

Erect spires, buffeted in pastel pinks and mauves.

 

Exotic mouths and lips and scimitar spurs,

Cream butterflies dance, soon catch my eye.

Rare relics from times long past

Now surfaced here once more.

 

Once sun has slipped, once fox and cubs are earthed

Cat’s ears have closed, their sweet plume drifts.

Diffuse, intoxicates across this darkening scene.

Rich, complex lilac-laden booze

A lure too sure for Burnished Brass.

Watch spring uncoiled, rich nectar’s sipped.

The trap’s been sprung, the eye pads fixed.

 

Dumb vector too inanimate a phrase

For such sophisticated sex.

Consummate communion, is this A.I?

Slick, honed-perfect, way before we’d worked it out,

When roving moth meets static butterfly.

 

 

Too soon, the ghosts have left the scene.

Their hidden twisted wombs, at least a few, swell slow.

Green desiccates. Brown husks unseen, and no one sees the split.

No one smells the drifting dust,

No one feels the peloton’s first penetrating thrust

Yet penetrate, the unseen, unknown fungus must.

Then, yet more glorious symbiotic muse

Weaves life from dust, from ashes spewed.

 

Perhaps in six, seven, or eight years hence

Slow-nurtured thus, beneath-ground corms, have grown.

Their broad plain leaves, paired, eat bright light.

Returning favours, fungal nannies now are fed

The orchid testis tubers fat and fit to flower.

 

Will I be here to count, to see

In this small field of dreams, if then

A butterfly armada sails forth

Before the Peloton rides out, again.

 

20/07/2025

I’ve done a little more reading and musing around how much longer, and slower it’s been for butterfly orchids to appear in this field – at least visibly in flower, since the broad flat mid green basal leaves would be very hard to spot amongst other foliage in a hay meadow. The original few seed capsules were introduced around 8 to 10 years ago – none since. The flowering progression has been 1,1,4, 0, 18 (this year). Hence my speculation about how long it takes for a seed to grow into a tuber of potential flowering size. It seems several species of terrestrial orchids have had long term studies relating to flowering potential. In this one,”Trait analysis in a population of the Greater Butterfly-orchid observed through a 16-year period”, the authors counted flower numbers and measured flower parameters like spur length, spike height and flower number, and tried to statistically link them to (sadly not very) local weather records. The most significant data implied that “the widely fluctuating number of flowering plants was highest in years immediately following those characterised by relatively dry and/or sunny springs. The “decision” to flower is taken during the previous summer, though it may be modified through winter/spring abortion of above-ground organs”.

Another couple of long term studies imply both the considerable longevity of individual orchid plants in the case of Green-winged Orchids (Anacamptis morio) at Upwood Meadows NNR, Huntingdonshire “The majority of plants flowered for over half of their lifespan, the average lifespan of an individual plant was almost 10 years, and the known maximum lifespan above-ground for an individual was at least 36 years.”

And considerable variation in the number of plants actually producing flowers each year in this study, “Flowering dynamics of Orchis morio L. and Herminium monorchis (L.) R.Br. at two sites in eastern England”. “The proportion of plants which flowered each year varied considerably between species, flowering in O. morio exceeding 40% in all years except one over an 18 year period; over a 30 year period (1966–95), the number of plants of Herminium in flower never exceeded 36% of the population and no inflorescences were produced in 1977 and 1991″. In this paper the observation is made that flowering rate increases with rainfall and declines with high temperatures during the previous summer. “It is hypothesized that drought and high temperatures in the summer reduce leaf area and cause premature senescence and the death of leaves, with the result that not enough carbohydrates are stored to enable plants to support or initiate inflorescences the following year.”

Combining these slightly different observations makes for interesting speculation as to how many flowers we’ll find next year after such a sunny, warm relatively dry spring, yet with enough rain and light in June to allow plants to recover and continue to grow well before the really hot weather arrived in mid July.

As an interesting contrasting insight into just how quickly some orchid tubers can reach flowering size, the new-build verge which Andy has created with a couple of bags of green hay from our meadows, produced a first orchid flower spike in June (in the centre of the third photo below). And less than 2 years after having the green hay scattered onto ‘virgin’ builder topsoil. Many thanks to Andy for letting me include these photos showing just how lovely the grassy roadside strip looked this summer. It self evidently seems to be a very viable option for increasing visual and floral diversity as well as adding insect friendly flowers to new build projects.

My guess is that our daffodils might respond in a similar way to orchid tubers and flower well next year after an apparently very good spring for foliage growth. Time will tell.

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We’d made the first of two trips to stay with Fiona’s mum overnight, in part because out of the blue, I’d received an email from a school contemporary, to let me know that a reunion was being planned at the school, around the time 50 years ago, we all left to make our disparate ways in the world. I’ve not kept in touch with any friends from school over the years, but the potential list of attendees jogged a few memories, I was intrigued, and living in such an isolated part of Britain, I also wondered if I’d get an insight into how others viewed the current state of the nation. I intentionally left my camera behind so am slotting in more pictures from the garden and glorious meadows to accompany this section.

As a rare state, non-feepaying ( for dayboys) grammar school with a separate fee paying boarding house, the school still looked very familiar in many ways. Yet also massively different. Its success and popularity (currently over 10 applicants for every place) means that the main site now has many new buildings occupying much of what was green space in our day. Instead of around 350 boys, it now has over 1,000 pupils, and has just taken girls into the entry classes, though the 6th form has been co-ed for many years.

And what of my contemporaries? Inevitably, a few are sadly no longer alive. Many looked vaguely, or in some cases amazingly recognizable. Though the ID badges which were instantly printed out for us all as we arrived on site, and hung around our necks were helpful. And just another example of how school life has changed – perimeter fences, CCTV cameras, and sliding security gates to access the site at the rear, reminders that even in the still quaint and sleepy market town where the old school sits, unchanged on the High Street, security is a real concern.

The Old School buildings were built in 1656, just down from the large sandstone church sitting on an island in the road, when it was founded by a clearly very affluent and benevolent member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers – one of the Great Twelve Livery Companies of the City of London.

After a tour of the main school buildings, and a talk by the incumbent headmaster, who’s handing over the reins this summer after 17 years in post, (just 21 heads in all those centuries has no doubt helped the school to thrive), we drove up for lunch to the impressive boarding house at Longford Hall, just outside the town. This overlooks the extensive playing fields. I’d never set foot in this building before, so it was a delight to share a buffet in one of the large lower rooms, and hear remembered stories from some of the boarders in our year, as well as having a look at how well the building has been maintained and how vast a complex of impressive rooms it has.

The obligatory group photo is included, (thanks to Rebecca, our guide for the day – the school now has a dedicated Development and Alumni Manager!) showing a happy band of fogies, enjoying a glorious day of Shropshire sunshine in the already very dry landscape up there. I had to leave at this point for the long drive back home after picking up Fiona, and picking up soft Welsh drizzle and grey skies as we crossed the backbone of the Cambrian mountains into our more familiar green landscapes.

I was left reflecting on what the attendees have all managed to achieve in their very different lives, and indeed put back into the world and society, after starting out as a motley crew. Farmers, policemen, bankers, investment managers, quantity surveyors, teachers, journalists, to mention just a few of the careers. One farmer’s son had left and settled in Germany after an eventual career move into IT marketing, and returned for the occasion.  And I’m also encouraged that the school is clearly still doing a good job of encouraging not just academic achievement, but a much more rounded education with a major emphasis on musical, artistic and sporting success. With a more diverse intake of pupils than in our day, and still a smattering of international students to add to the mix.

I suspect that this may turn out to be my last visit to the school, so a good opportunity to be reflective. With hindsight the 7 years spent there, although only around a tenth of all of the attendees’ lives, were probably pivotal times for many. In my case, living in a distant town and in a large family, perhaps less so. Yet opportunities abounded, we were very fortunate in many ways, and in particular I avoided some of the frankly ghastly physical abuse that a couple of lads endured on a frequent basis from fellow classmates. A regular reminder to me of one of mum’s favourite lines to us all, when squabbling or fighting over something at home, as four brothers were prone to do.

“Everything in life is not always fair.”

And never can it be so. But it doesn’t mean that one can’t aspire to sharing upbeat stories, rather than just doom and gloom.

Expressed brilliantly in this YouTube nugget which I discovered about 10 days ago, and I’ll share with anyone prepared to sit and watch for about 20 minutes. And simply titled “The transformative power of classical music”. This is a marvellous TED talk from many years ago, given by Benjamin Zander, a British born conductor I’d never heard of before, who is currently the musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Full of wit and upbeat anecdotes, I’d suggest everyone will come away with something positive to reflect upon, after watching it.

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In a year when fly numbers seem to have recovered spectacularly after last year’s apparently weather related crash, each time I put my bee suit away, Fiona discovered yet more wasp nests in uncomfortably nuisance locations. The many marjoram flowers in bloom around the garden are covered in flies of many species. I zoomed on on this photo and counted 23! No bees, or wasps at the moment, just flies, which is strange – I suspect the honey bees are all off seeking out the Himalayan Balsam flowers which are early this year.

Our Eryngium flowers are also always popular, and this year seem to have attracted bumbles, honey bees and wasps in equal numbers, requiring a gentle approach when opening the stable door.

The first new nest was just above our rear door entrance – more or less on the opposite side of the house to the one I described in my last post, but this time located beneath one of our often open Velux windows. As well as being built right next to the satellite internet cable which runs through the wall and into our bedroom. The nest had already grown to fill the inter-rafter space. So at the end of a very hard session on the hay, I had one final job to do – foam spraying this. Sorry wasps.

I’d just put the suit away away, having had to use the spray 3 times on this nest, when Fiona told me she’d found another one. This time in the middle of an undercover big bag of our harvested dead Molinia foliage bedding. She’d grabbed a large armful of this and tossed it into a pen in preparation for having to bring inside ‘Indie’ one of our ewes, who very sadly has been troubled with a facial/head dermatitis again in recent weeks. Fiona was aware of a lot of buzzing wasps flying around so sensibly immediately retreated. Only later could I assess that she’d actually managed to split and grab half of a large nest hidden in the bedding. How she escaped without a single sting, I don’t know.

At least the third nest she’d spotted after a walk around the lower meadow could be safely left alone, built as it was on the side of a ditch bank. We wondered how well it would survive, out in the open, once serious rain arrived. In the end, it was barely a week after we’d noticed it, that an animal (fox or badger, I guess), had ripped it apart digging the bank out to reach the nutritious larval forms – as many will know, there is no stored honey or nectar in a wasp nest.

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I’ll close with a beautiful new piece of contemporary choral music, discovered on Anna Lapwood’s latest ‘Firedove’ album which I mentioned last time. ‘Come to me‘ was composed by Swiss composer Ivo Antognini in 2019, using the lyrics of the Victorian romantic poet Christina Rosetti’s poem ‘Echo’ , written in 1854 to create this most beautiful moving piece of music. Rosetti’s poem explores the themes of memory, loss and the enduring power of love, recalled even after the death of a loved one. Recorded here by Pembroke College choir in the chapel, as one of the last recordings made before Lapwood left her position as Director of Music to pursue her solo organist career.