A burst of more “creative” writing.

Triggered, as with the second flush of growth being seen all around us in the garden, by the rain which has fallen so far every day this month, I caught up on some acrostic poems which I’ve been trying to complete for ages: one for each month of the year.

They still need “polishing”, as Laurie Lee put it in his handwritten advice to a teenage girl, who’d written to Lee, Ted Hughes and Sir John Betjeman asking for advice on how they write poetry, for a CSE project she was completing in 1967.

How do I know this? The set of 3 badly foxed letters she received in reply is currently up for sale online, though not, sadly, the details of the precise questions she asked of the great names. There was a strange synchronicity in being told about these in my email feed this week. This week has also seen a significant quadrennial gathering at Ted Hughes’ alma mater, Pembroke College, Cambridge, for the 10th International Ted Hughes Conference. Under the banner of “The Legacy of Ted Hughes”.

Hughes’s own handwritten letter to the inquisitive, budding young poet, Miss Carolyn Sweet, (who one can deduce, from all three responses, must have framed her written approach by asking 3 questions), begins with this:

“I’m afraid anything I tell you about poems I have written can only prevent you from seeing for yourself…” 

1: “I would say poetry is the most difficult of all the arts, and there is no way to set about writing it…”

He goes on:

2: “The more the emotions are involved, the better the poetry, so long as the brains are involved to a precisely equivalent degree”…

Then :

3: “The only research involved is having lived so long. Poetry is the one thing you cannot do research for…. 

He concludes this fascinating letter with:

“I hope this puzzles you – then you can’t be tempted to reproduce it.” 

Gosh… quite a challenging response from the great man, and very different in tone to the other 2 poets’ replies. He was, at this time of his life, in what most people would consider to be a turbulent phase. Hughes had begun his post-school studies by reading English at Pembroke before switching to archaeology and anthropology for his third year, as he realised, in part after his significant burning fox dream, (in a very simple explanation by me), that the dry formality of the then English course was stifling his creative ideas. His third-year switch undoubtedly helped his subsequent poetic interest in myths and folklore.

I’m not sure that I agree with his comments.

Is (good/great/enjoyable) poetry the most difficult of the arts? My guess is that composers and artists, for example, might dispute this. And one could argue that it’s a self-promotional view to take, great poet that he was.

Hughes was a phenomenal writer of letters over his whole life. 800 pages are included in this massive collected tome, though I suspect not the one featured here to Ms Sweet. The Faber summary describes his edited book of letters thus:

At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter-writing as ‘excellent training for conversation with the world’, and he was to become a prolific master of this art which combines writing and talking. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children); a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial.

But back to my own feeble acrostics. I fail miserably on many fronts – and I dislike the constraints of the acrostic form (though it was my idea in the first place to write such a series, so I have no one else to blame).

But influenced by recent observations in this unusual year, and indeed by my advancing years, here they are:

 

June, so soon? 

June – so soon? What happened to your lengthening days?

Unexpected warbled dawns, dusk-bearding bees.

New thrills: home hares, moth-butterfly quick stick-on tricks,

 Each scrawny swallow chick, sure sign that summer’s here.

 

 

 

July Shone 

July shone. Sun, heat, drought; seared hay swathes; sweat-cut fools.

Under sheet-draped doors, thick white-washed walls, cave cool.

Let the earth bake, the worms knot, the moles die.

You will not forget this record July.

 

 

August’s Exhaustion

August’s exhaustion sapped summer’s sunshine spell.

Upside down, time-frozen clouded yellow flirts.

Green-brown grass recalled from distant childhood times

Until the longed-for rain arrived, revived.

Smoke smells, shot-stars, wasp-nibbled, cigarred leaves.

Time ran out. Earth’s dust choked earth tongues’ sighs.

 

 

September Spells 

September spells a seasonal seismic shift.

Earth, unseen beneath its crisping cape, gasps.

Plants, all desiccated, drooping leaves, swell

Timid charms, gold-flashed, pluck knapweed’s soggy heads.

Emperor hawks, bold blue, amongst rich rowans, ripe.

Mark autumn’s so-slow slide; sowbread crooks unfurl

Birch boletes – big, brown, bold, erupt and rot.

Each swallow flight, each gulp, their last farewell?

Rain falls gentle, seeps. Robins, flushed, ring clear.

 

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September 1st dawned with the sun burning through thick mist after a chilly night – a perfect start to the autumnal season, after what will be remembered as the longest, hottest and driest summer we’ve ever experienced here. The Met Office quickly checked their numbers and declared it the hottest, sunniest and one of the driest summers across Wales since its records began. Some easy-to-grasp, colour-coded maps highlight this, on the link above.

Here’s their interesting comparison between the summers of 1976 and 2026

Of even more interest to me was discovering the maps on the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology survey. This includes assessments of the groundwater deficit, soil moisture and river flows – it turns out we will need a lot of rain over and above our typical autumnal and winter deluges to bring these stores up to their typical wet level. Look back at their report from the end of May, and you’ll note that the Met Office was way off the mark with its forecast for this exceptional summer:

Issued on 8/06/2026 they state that

“Over the next 3 months, the forecast indicates that near-average rainfall is most likely, although a wet three months period is more probable than a dry one.”

Hmmm. So much for the weather forecasting, just a few weeks ahead.

What price for their accuracy 30 years out?

But never mind, that’s the climate, not weather, isn’t it? So don’t confuse the two, Julian, you of little faith!

However, this got me thinking – just how much extra rain will we need to restore our groundwater levels, and when did it begin to become a problem here over the last year?

To try to answer this, I’ve compiled our own mean monthly rainfall data from the last 13 years and compared that with our actual monthly rainfall over the last 12 months. With any monthly surplus or deficit over the mean figure highlighted:

09/2025: 243 mm   mean:166 mm   monthly surplus: 77mm

10/2025: 226mm    mean: 207 mm  monthly surplus: 19mm

11/2025: 379mm   mean: 226 mm  monthly surplus:  153mm

12/2025: 341mm  mean: 268 mm   monthly surplus:  73mm

01/2026: 262 mm  mean: 212 mm  monthly surplus:  50mm

02/2026: 227 mm  mean: 207 mm  monthly surplus: 20mm

03/2026: 150 mm  mean: 152.7 mm monthly deficit: 2.7mm 

04/2026: 95.5 mm mean: 96.1 mm monthly deficit: 0.6 mm

05/2026: 91.8 mm  mean: 97 mm  monthly deficit: 5.2 mm

06/2026: 134 mm  mean: 101 mm   monthly surplus: 33 mm

07/2026: 8 mm   mean: 95 mm       monthly deficit:  87 mm 

08/2026: 74mm  mean: 142.5mm   monthly deficit: 68.5 mm

Thus, from last September, there were far more months in surplus, with a total surplus of 425mm for this rolling year. Months in deficit, just 164mm. Overall surplus for the year was 261 mm

What was clearly most significant was the fact that the deficit months coincided exactly with this summer’s heat and sunshine. When much water was lost from the higher levels of the ground via increased evapotranspiration. And in any event (in a lightbulb moment for me!), our groundwater will always try to run downhill – though this can be an incredibly slow process, taking many years or decades, particularly in the type of shale rock that underpins our land.

These rocks are (I now know), Silurian-age turbiditic mudstones, shales, and siltstones, primarily belonging to the Cwmere Formation and the Rhyddlan Formation. They were deposited roughly 430 to 440 million years ago as deep-water sediment flows within the ancient Welsh Basin. Because the region underwent intense folding and low-grade metamorphism during the Caledonian orogeny, the shales are hard but highly fractured and brittle. This brittle nature is responsible for the rapidly draining, stony shale soils characteristic of our local hillsides.

As September has progressed, some rain has fallen every day, but it wasn’t until September 12/13th that we had our first significant rainfall in months – 25 mm, which will have begun the restoration of groundwater.

At the time of writing, we’ve had over 160 mm of rainfall in the last 4 weeks, yet digging holes for the last seedling Hydrangeas to be planted out, showed just how dusty-dry the soil still is beneath the larger trees flanking our Malus/Sorbus copse. The stream may have risen almost to normal; the ground is not yet restored.

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I chose a warm and quite still day about 10 days ago to remove a single box (super) of honey from the only two hives I ever open. All went according to plan with no real aggression from the bees, using a simple system I’ve tweaked in recent years. About a week later, on a wet day when very few wasps or bees would be flying, I brought the boxes inside to complete the messy job of cutting out the comb honey. I inevitably ended up with sticky fingers, and drips of honey everywhere despite my best endeavours, but thought it would be worth making a shortish film of how I do it. To remind me next year of the various key stages, and also for the benefit of anyone else wondering about keeping no/low interference, treatment-free honey bees for the first time. And wondering how to take honey off the colony with the minimum of fuss. This clearly isn’t the only way, but it seems to work well for me and the bees.

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In the space of just a couple of days, we spotted a wonderful array of normally infrequent sightings, particularly this late in the year: a kingfisher arrowed away along the now-restored stream, along with a flitting holly blue butterfly. A hummingbird hawk moth was still visiting flowers in the garden.

Birch boletes, the potentially poisonous brown roll-rim mushroom (Paxillus involutus), and a brown Agaric/Amanita-style mushroom all emerged close to the small copse of birch in the damper lower haymeadow. A pair of unusually tiny small coppers, Lycaena phlaeas flirted and visited the few remaining cat’s ear flowers in the upper hay meadow, where a second or third-generation female clouded yellow, Colias croceus, butterfly took to the wing in bursts of warm sunshine.

However, probably the most special sightings were finding not one, but two pairs of Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum, dragonflies, locked in the wheel position simultaneously, on the cobbles beside the front door, and then on the stone seat in the terrace garden. Checking the surface temperatures, they had landed on stone at around 28 degrees C, while the surrounding vegetation was a mere 21 degrees C. I’d found a single Common Darter resting in an almost identical location back in 2012, and discussed in that piece how dragonflies can perceive infrared colours and can thus likely pick the perfect spot to warm up – even when mating! Recent studies published this year explain in a little more detail how they achieve this deep/infra-red red vision.

And then, a pristine second or third generation Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta, was apparently glued to some deep red Rosa rugosa hips in a strong, gusty wind, as we sat and ate our lunch. How impressive being able to hang onto such an apparently smooth, shiny round surface and not be blown off. It must have been recently emerged, I guessed, and preparing for first flight, occasionally opening its wings in quick bursts when the sun broke through clouds.

Only later did I spot the real explanation – it had found a tiny blemish in the ripening hip, and was probing it for sustenance. Its proboscis plunging deep inside the softening pulp.

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As I sat outside for breakfast this morning on the 18th, I was once more treated to a fine flight of swallows racing above me. No last farewell yet!

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Two new discoveries for us this last week, after all these years in this place.

Firstly, I noticed evidence of a central, roughly square, blocked-up window in the whitewashed end gable wall of the house. Probably used to load loose hay into the upstairs hay loft of the end section of our long house. Its outline is central and slightly above the line of the existing windows and about twice their size in the photo above.

Only the internal cut-off stubs of the wooden beams supporting this likely upper storage floor were visible when we bought the derelict property 33 years ago, but why hadn’t we ever seen this outline before? Perhaps the wall has dried out so much this year that it’s affected the appearance, which had to be viewed at just the right angle and in the right light to be apparent.

Secondly, I’ve done a lot more thinking about how often we should move our sheep from meadow to meadow to reduce the impact of compaction from their hoof prints. We’ve long observed that (without a dog) they will rarely want to move from their new pasture for a while after they’ve been moved into it. But I was intrigued to find a little more data, since one of the important observations from our own, and neighbour’s land during this drought year, is how quickly/slowly grass growth will recover, after stock have been moved on. Or not. After a simple AI query, I was told by Google’s Gemini that:

Daily Steps: A normal grazing sheep takes roughly 12,000 to 18,000 steps per day.
Hoof Strikes: Every complete step cycle requires all 4 hooves to impact the ground.
Total Episodes: 12,000 to 18,000 steps multiplied by 4 hooves equals 48,000 to 72,000 hoof impacts daily.

Hoof Size: A 30 kg sheep has a small contact area of roughly 10 to 12 cm² (0.001 to 0.0012 m²) per hoof.
Minimum Impact: 48,000 impacts × 0.0010 m² = 48 square meters.
Maximum Impact: 72,000 impacts × 0.0012 m² = 86.4 square meters.

Soil Compaction Effect:
Dynamic Pressure: Moving sheep exert a high pressure of 200 kPa (29 psi) on the soil.
Static Pressure: Standing sheep exert a lighter pressure of about 80 kPa (12 psi).
Compaction Depth: This force creates a shallow compaction layer 2 to 6 cm deep.

We’d already decided that regardless of how much grass there was in a particular meadow, we should move our flock of 20 about every 2 days – no longer. It seems from the above figures that this is a prudent target to avoid too much compaction from hoof hits.

Once we split the flock, roughly into two, for tupping time, we reckoned we could stretch this to every 4 days. What was remarkable was that the sheep seem to be able to tell us this was the appropriate time to move. Try moving them every day, and they’re not interested, yet get beyond 2 or 3 days, and they’re at the gate, ready to go. No need for tempting pellets in a bucket – they just want fresh, untrodden grass. Regardless of how much grass is left in the field they’re already in. I’d often surmised that since (in my opinion) sheep are very fastidious eaters, they hate eating grass that has been soiled by urine or faeces. In fact, it may well extend to grass that has been recently trodden on. They’ll follow wherever you lead them out of the ‘old’ field and, once in the clean field, will do what they always do – spread out immediately across the whole field to find the freshest, most interesting leaves to consume first. Not surprising really, is it? This frequency of movement is far more frequent than a typical upland farmer will manage – for all sorts of reasons. Our neighbour across the stream, for comparison, has continuously grazed his 2 fields all summer with perhaps 50 sheep since May. No break or change at all.

But the sheep clearly know what’s best for them! Not just what the farmer often provides for them.

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What follows seems the most appropriate piece of music to include in this post. The Toronto Bach Festival Orchestra performs the aria “Schafe können sicher weiden”, popularly known as “Sheep may safely graze”. The performers in the beautifully performed version, below are: Ellen McAteer, soprano; Alison Melville, recorder; Colin Savage, recorder; Michael Unterman, cello and Christopher Bagan, organ.

It is the most famous part of J.S. Bach’s cantata “Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd!” (BWV 208), commonly known as the Hunt Cantata Celebration. Bach composed this in 1713 for the 31st birthday celebration of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The aria is sung by Pales, the ancient Roman goddess of pastures and livestock. The text draws a parallel between a protected flock of sheep and citizens living in peace under the care of a wise ruler.

Now, there’s a novel thought for today’s world.