harvest, umbrella, wind sounds

A few minutes harvesting this morning testifies to the aesthetic pleasure as well as the gastronomic promise of growing fruit and vegetable.

In a neighbouring garden, an old apple tree is shrouded in clematis montana rubens. The clematis is no longer in flower, (in May the pink flowers among the apple blossom give new life to the tree), but now its rampant leaves and stems, form a conical umbrella over the tree, remarkably symetrical in shape. Today, on top of the umbrella, a magpie busies itself.

In the Grove, this afternoon, I stop and listen to the wind in the trees. I ask myself, as I have done before, whether the sounds which the wind makes vary from tree to tree? A beech, I decide, has a fussy, slightly frantic sound, a silver birch rustles like lace, while a neigbouring oak is slower and more settled in its noisy whisper. But it is hard to tell how the gusts of wind dispose themselves in the air over the eminence on which the Grove is planted.