Is this the most unlikely place to find beauty?
Perhaps mayflies dance to find joy in the ordinary too
Welcome to this week’s letter from the moss.
I realise I threw you something of a curve ball last week with my brief reference to windows and mirrors in photography - the idea that our images are either a window through which we explore the world outside or a mirror, an outward expression of our selves and the things that provoke a response in us: we’re feeling as much as seeing an image. I had it in mind to write more about this, but I hope you’ll bear with me this week as the sun called me out to play.
Last week's beautiful sunset was followed by another on Sunday, slightly more tasteful: salmon pink on baby blue.
With the heat the season again shouts loudly and walking in the wood the brightest colours are blue and green, with splashes of yellow and magenta. Serendipity brought a discovery of beauty in a most unlikely location.
Walk slowly through wood and around moss
After watching the mayflies dance over the back lawn at breakfast, the wood calls. I leave behind the sounds of tractor and digger and enter bird song. An oxeye daisy has joined the party along the path through the reeds; if there are orchids this year they are lost amid the rush to grow. At 9am the sun is already warm on my back as I stop and listen to wren, willow warbler and blackcap. Hat and water bottle under arm, my footsteps are accompanied by the sound of water sloshing back and forth. Yellow flags wave as I pass.
Step off the path and more birdsong fills a grassy green glade. Sunlight above, leaf light below.
Under birch a new florescence of cuckoo spit dots the grass and competes with the small white flowers of heath bedstraw. Flat pods hang on fading broom like small green mangetout; they will shift to black as the seeds ripen but beware - they are toxic. I’ve just read that broom seeds retain their ability to germinate for up to 60 years: I may have to be less generous in tolerating their encroachment into the garden.
Crossing the ditch, biofilm catches the eye. On approach, the shallowing flow is brackish and muddy in colour; look back and it has sucked the brightest blues from the sky. I think of unpolished rough lapis lazuli but no, this is closer to apatite. Even the scummiest places hold beauty if you look closely. Mayflies again dance; perhaps they find joy in unexpected beauty too.
The dance begins:
Sometimes sunlight through grass - or sedge - is all you need. Add a tree creeper for company, the second of the day; it completes an equally slow examination of the pine bark.
The chickweed wintergreen is still flowering, revelling in the year’s extra moisture; it’s now joined by yellow tormentil.
Fungal networks are already throwing up fruiting bodies. The rhododendron really shouldn’t be here but I’m still beguiled and stop to enjoy the interplay of light and shadow, shape and texture.
A buzzard flies low through the treetops. Tree pipit and chaffinch sing as I skirt the moss; a bee bumbles low. New buds on bog asphodel have appeared amid last year‘s husks; cross-leaved heath has its first pink bells. The moss still squelches; hare’s tail cotton grass is having a ball as white and fluffy seed heads expand in the sun.
Grass grows lush in the heart of the wood. If there are spirits here, they will surely turn me into a tree as I appear rooted in this place. The cuckoo sings; a deer watches me across the heather.
I lay down some ground rules so that I will actually make it back home in time for lunch, as expected: I’m not allowed to take any more photos. I qualify this a little with a few exceptions: water (unlikely to be an issue as the ditches carry little but moss), flowers that will fade, or light that is unusual. I mostly managed to stick to this, sparing some foxgloves amid the golden flowers of tufted hair grass.
A tiny lizard scuttles across the macadam and eyes me from the safety of the grass. As the heat builds, we’re both glad to be heading home.
I value each and every response to these weekly letters. If you enjoy them and are able to do so, please consider supporting the time I spend writing this miniature magazine by taking out a paid subscription. To those who have, my sincere thanks.
Until next week,
I couldn’t resist another dose of that blue…
All words and images copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted
I especially love the "Cotton balls" photo!
Nice line: “Grass grows lush in the heart of the wood. If there are spirits here, they will surely turn me into a tree”