Nature Writing

Tony Kelly: July 1974

I wonder if all moths have red eyes? Irrespective of species, it seems, as they cluster on our windows in the night, their eyes shine out like two tiny deep red lamps glowing in the darkness and flashing like jewels in the light of a torch, which most of them appear to ignore, unless their motionlessness is a sign of appreciation of the added brilliance! Some of the smaller moths, the Carpets, are usually very lively and restless and start away when they're approached, even from quite a distance, but the bigger ones, used to relying on their camouflage, are more stolid and easy to capture and bring indoors to identify, where they soon settle down. And most of them, having settled down, show little concern about flight, and so little in fact, that when we return them to the wild on a small piece of card, they're quite content just to remain there, and even when pushed from behind, they will merely walk along, off the card, and onto a wall for flight some hours later or, in some cases, even days later. It's been an unusual and prolific year for moths and there are still a few White Ermines about as well as the giant Poplar Hawk moths; and the brilliant Garden Tiger in black, red and yellow is now quite common among the little Straw Dots and the clumsy Drinkers which crash into our windows. Last night there was a Magpie and a few Antlers, and before that the Large Emerald (not really emerald, but a silky jade green). In the high fields we found a Burnett moth, somewhat removed from its more usual haunts among the sedges and rushes of the waun, and there are Ringlet butterflies and everywhere the Meadow Brown.

The trees begin to look thinner and barer as they do about the time of Mabh's feast and I used to regard this with some apprehension as a sign of an early Autumn and the premature touch of the Haggard One, but it's no such thing, nor ever has been, and there'll be leaves on the trees for a season yet and the breast of the Earth Mother is warm and full. But it's a curious thing and I think it comes about in this way. At Bealtaine the once-bare trees are clothed in the small bright green leaves of Spring and they grow dense and bushy, and as the Sun climbs higher the leaves take on the dark green hues of Summer and the shadows grow denser. At Midsummer the leaves seem to reach their maturity with the maturity of the Summer Sun, and then the stems begin to lengthen, possibly to carry the now densely-clustered leaves upward and outward into the light, and it's probably this lengthening of the stems which opens the leaves out and gives them a lighter, barer aspect. But the new stems bear new leaves which quickly open and expose the brown and red glows of their newness, and this is especially noticeable in the garden where a surplus 500 oak trees await Autumn planting. A few moons ago, their green leaves were covered in the massed blue of the wild forget-me-not flowers which invaded the newly cultivated earth, and more recently overlapped by the taller stems and yellow flowers of the Corn Sowthistle and Nipplewort and the violet spikes of the Woundwort. But now the oaks are growing and the great drift of bright forget-me-not blue is interspersed with the deep red glow of the emerging clusters of newly unfolding oak leaves.

Deep in the grasses the wild flowers grow, the deep blue Self-heal and brighter blue Tufted Vetch, yellow flowered Bird's-foot Trefoil and Meadow Vetchling, foxgloves tall in the hedges and under the trees, and Broad-leaved Willow Herb in the waste places. There's white clover and red, blackberries in flower, pink Dog Roses flowering in the hedgerows and the sweetly scented white Trailing Roses in the shady places by the streams and under the trees. There are blossoms too on the Elder Trees though many of the flowers are spent and the ovaries, green and tiny, are beginning to swell on the way to becoming the shiny black berries that will later hang on the trees in their clustered thousands.

Nature in April

Tony Kelly (mid April 1979):

At last the rain has stopped and the air has been warm, even hot, and full of insects and birdsong. Slowly, and it seems very slowly, the faded yellow of the matted grass is becoming greener as the new shoots push their way through, and all over it on its peculiarly smoothed surface, thousands of little wolf spiders run about in search of food. Two of them pounce on each other, realise their mistake and make off in different directions. In the stream, green filaments of algae are beginning to weave outwards from the under-water stones and a darker species bubbles away in the dwindling pools of the hollows. There's a new growth of leaves on the kale that the Winter devastated, and tiny specks of green on the hazels and the hawthorn and a few more warm days will bring the leaves which indeed are already appearing on the spindle trees. There are bright new leaves of wood sorrel under the hedges and the tips of the new fronds of the maidenhair spleenwort among the old fronds on the ancient mortar of the old stone wall, and a withered-looking hart's tongue fern that decided to be almost deciduous this Winter. Of flowers there's scarcely a sign; the snowdrops are fading now and the daffodils are just opening their flower buds and the blue and purple flowers of lungwort are adorning a migrant rhubarb patch. But the Sun rides high, there are moths aplenty, birdsong in the air, and a jackdaw is hacking away at a slate on our roof while another is bringing presents of firewood and dumping them on the bed, all of which is to say that the warm weather is coming and, in a day or two, even the trees will dress in their finery to welcome the Goddess of the Summer.

Nature in April

Greg Hill (April 1979):

I went out to the wild places to see where the Spring had come, and where she was still biding her time in the closed bud's seclusion, and guarding warmth yet beneath the folded petals.  The Earth was soft in the wooded cwm and I stood on a rock in the rushing stream while the waters flowed around me.  To one side the bank was full of bright green leaves of wood-garlic, on the other the grey rock was piled high and clothed with a hundred shades of green and yellow from the many mosses that grow there - as beautiful and exotic a garden as one could wish for.  Back on the bank I saw a single flower of wood-anemone showing bright yellow stamens in the white petals though the leaves were still unfolded.  And yellow was the colour that speckled the green of the roadside verges, with coltsfoot in the gravelly place and daffodils by the garden paths and dandelion and celandine under the bare twigs on the hedges.  But not yet is the day come when the banks are brighted with as much yellow as there is green and primroses grace the woodland floor and the trees are a rustle of wind-blown leaves.
   So I watched for a while from my high window over the wood and my heart called out again to go to the place of trees: to see my lady there.  Her green cowl about her brown hair, she walks through the grey woods.  She treads a path of ragged leaves and petals open as she goes, yellow buds unfold on every green stem.  She casts her green cloak over the brown land and the woods come alive to look upon her.  Her dewy skin as soft as lady-fern leaves, and moist like a buttercup looks in the morning grass.  The Wind sighs as her scent sails on the morning air.