Beyond the Lawn: The quiet magic of summer grass
Find your escape and wonder in the wild, whispering, corners that embrace the season.
When summer arrives, what do you picture? Perhaps sun-drenched memories mingle with the luxury of light days, or wandering through long grass with your fingers trailing as birds and grasshoppers serenade the warmth. Most of these experiences I can share with you here today. That 'carefree' essence we long for, I've found, is often a matter of perspective.
Greetings from the moss,
What does the barley feel as the wind fingers its spikes? As stem flexes and awn and glume submit to pressure? As the whole field becomes fluid—green lustre, velvet baize—and shifts like a sea. As the crop seems to dance, alternately light and shadow, shiny and matt, shifting shape, seemingly joyful, alive.
Like the stems in the breeze, I swing first this way and that.
Another walk. Feeling uninspired, I force myself to go rather than welcoming the opportunity. My brain has been fizzing like a sparkler, both restless in its search for the next stimulus and yet lethargic. I am finding it hard to settle, to stay the course. Perhaps it is the season.
With the heat building, the schools here already finished, grasses and meadows seem a fitting choice for this week’s letter. They take me back too to a memory of moving house: to a garden of long grass, a wonderland for a four year old to explore. Until my father hired a mower...
I’m out in this garden, on my knees as if saying prayers in the early sunlight. It’s easy to overlook what is on the doorstep. My walks made me think I would head out to the verges that caught my eye the previous day, but then I realise all I have to do is go up above the trees to an area I grandly refer to as grassland.
It may seem big, remote, from the garden but in both respects my camera lies. It’s a small area, as yet just out of reach of the broom which given the blink of an eye would take over—but if you see a yellow tinge in the background these are protectors around the stays for the 11kW electricity pole. Today it is wild enough.
It is an area that I will keep for the grasses. For the first two years I left it be; the third year I pulled out most of the seedling broom leaving just one or two to flower (by doing so, I know I have created more work for myself). And this year in late winter I strimmed the build up of old dead grass and now I can see the benefit, a richness of grass varieties, their flowers nodding gently in the breeze. The movement of the air is as welcome as the rising sun, dispelling the midges who thought they might have me for breakfast.
Another morning. I plan to walk, just walk, but can’t resist taking the small camera. It’s fatal. In the still air of early morning the plants on the edge of the overgrown pastures snag at my clothes as I pass. A first stop to listen to a bird more often heard than seen, but then I see the sedge warbler fly down to the edge of the ditch. I hear the water as it passes under the path through the culvert, and share the enjoyment of purple vetchling with a golden bee.
My fate is sealed; I forget the walk. I will lose fewer calories, my back will grumble, but my eyes and my brain are already celebrating.
If golf is a good walk spoiled, never go for a walk with a photographer.
I am bewitched by the grasses yet each year my brain has to reset, to remember their siren song. How can I forget this beauty? This thing we call grass, that we associate with lawns, to be mown, fed, sprayed, primped, so that it is nothing other than green. Let the ‘weeds’ grow and see the insects return. At this time of year, before the verges are cut and in the woodland glades there is song and dance among leaf, flower and stem. Even coarse Cock’s foot grass becomes regal.
As I return, I meet the sedge warbler again. He sounds as if he may be right next to the path, but who knows?
Until next week,
If you enjoy my writing and photos, please share this letter with a friend, and if you’re on Substack give it a little 💛 and a restack to help more people see it.
Earlier this year I chose to suspend paid subscriptions; I am especially grateful to those of you who choose to kindly buy me a cup of tea.
PostScript
Things that have made me sit up and take notice this week:
I took a little wander sideways into those categories of interest we tick and then overlook, pulled down by the verticality of the Substack Notes feed. Under Aesthetics I find
’s Four Measures of Beauty. To say I’m familiar with these concepts would be an exaggeration, but I have read about them as water and place and the ephemerality of it all pull me ever closer, and I lose myself in the small beauty of the ordinary.
Thirst: In Search of Freshwater. Another beautifully written exhibition review by Laura Cumming in last Sunday’s Observer which also had that article on that book…
Words and images copyright © Michela Griffith 2025 except where otherwise credited
Magical photos! I love the “sea of grass” video too.
Beautiful photos. I would like to go on a photo walk with you:)