Summer

by Melissa Harrison

  Bumblebees are found all over the world but they prefer temperate climates such as ours. Being furry and plump, they can’t take too much heat. They cope very well in cooler conditions because they are experts in regulating their body temperature. If you ever see one ‘shivering’ it is in fact heating itself up in order to fly. After all, it takes a lot of energy to get a chubby little bee off the ground.

  Worldwide there are 250 species, all unique in their appearance and behaviour. Each has a different set of coloured bands to help identify it, and they come in a variety of sizes. Here in the UK we have twenty-four species, eight of which can be commonly seen. When we think of a bumblebee, yellow and black stripes come to mind; but there are many more varieties. My personal favourite, the Common Carder, is covered in ginger hair, while the Red-tailed bumblebee is all black with – you guessed it, a red tail. Next time a bee bumbles past, take a closer look; there is more to it than you imagine.

  It is still spring and the queen’s next job is to lay and rear her first batch of eggs. She sits on the eggs and keeps them warm by ‘shivering’ her body. She feeds them for a couple of weeks, and by early summer they are fat enough to become adults. These will all be female, and they have a very important job: to look after the colony. Some are cleaner bees, who keep the nest in tip-top condition, while others guard it from intruders. The rest spend their time collecting nectar and pollen from flowers. Warm summer days are when we see the smaller workers flying around. The queen stays in the nest; she is waited on by her worker bees and tells them what to do all season long. It’s the females who do all the work in the bumblebee world.

  These mystical insects have always been of great interest to me. I first came into contact with them as a child when I used to rescue them from my garden pond. Offering up a concoction of sugar and water on a teaspoon, I would watch their long tongues emerge to feed and wait for them to gain the strength to fly away. But where were they going? Why were they so busy? Little did I know at the time the vital role they were playing in my life.

  The importance of these furry wonders has been publicised greatly in recent years, but it seems that we are still not grasping it. That’s the thing with magic; it’s hard to believe unless you see it happening. Pollination from insects contributes over £400 million to the UK economy every year. Bees pollinate peas, tomatoes, raspberries and strawberries. Imagine a world without these foods; or one where they are very scarce and expensive, which is what would happen without bees pollinating our crops. One solution to this problem is planting more flowers. Agricultural practices have reduced our wildflower meadows and in the last eighty years two species of bumblebee have already become extinct. We must not underestimate the potential of our gardens, which cover one million acres in the UK. It is best to plant bee-friendly flowers, rich in pollen and nectar: foxgloves and lavender are among the bees’ favourites.

  Late summer is upon us and this is when the males come into the equation. Males exist for the sole purpose of reproduction. They have no sting and don’t collect pollen. They really do have a relaxing lifestyle. The rest of the colony has been busy working all summer long. New queens also develop at this time of year, and they leave the nest and mate soon after; the males usually compete in some way to grab a female’s attention. Once the new queens have mated they must feed themselves up in order to survive a winter of hibernation. Next spring they will be the queen and create their very own colonies of bumblebees.

  It’s part of my role for Ulster Wildlife to survey these magical creatures on our nature reserves. This is the best part of my day, when I get to walk around and look for different species, identify them and distinguish between queens, workers and males. I just hope that the buzz of bumbles will fill our countryside for years to come: summer wouldn’t be the same without them. I guess that’s up to us. The creation of wildflower meadows makes a real difference to these beings. It is easy to see that putting out bird food feeds hungry birds, but the principle is the same – planting wild flowers feeds hungry bees.

  Bumblebees and fairies; no wonder they are interlinked in history and folklore, because they are both, after all, guardians of the natural world.

  Katy Bell, 2016

  Never in all my days did I see a corn harvest like that one. We started swiving, that is reaping, at the beginning of August-month, and we left the stooks standing in the fields till it should be time for the love-carriage, for the weather was so fine that they took no harm. It was the custom, if a farmer hadna much strength about him, that he should fix on a day for the neighbours to come and give a hand in the lugging of the grain. But up to that time, the weather being so good, we worked alone. It was up in the morning early, and no mistake! Such mornings as they were, too, with a strong heady sweetness in the air from the ripened corn, and the sun coming up stately as a swan into the vasty sky that had no cloud. Mother was very peärt and lively, what with the hot weather, which was good for the rheumatics, and the thought of easing-off the work which was to come when the harvest was gotten in. She’d be up and about at five, getting us our breakfast, and then off we’d go, with only just enough of clo’es on to be decent, and with our wooden harvest bottles full of small beer. We always had a brewing for the rep, that is, the reaping. This year we brewed a deal more, for there’d be all the neighbours to find in victuals and drink at the love-carriage. Looking back, it always seems to me that there was a kind of dwelling charm on all that time. Gideon was more contented than I’ve ever seen him, for there were two things that contented him, namely, to work till he dropped, and to finish what he set out to do. To see all his farm set with these rich stooks, sound and ripe, with never a sign of the weevil nor of mildew nor the smut, was very life to him. He was all of a fever to get it safe in stack, but we were bound to wait till the day fixed. Jancis was to come on that day, to help in the leasing. And it seemed to me as she ought to go atop of the last load with blossoms about her, like the image they were used to set up there, for she seemed a part of the harvest, with all that pink and gold.

  As for me, I went all dazed and dumb with wonder. To think it was true, ‘The Maister be come!’ To think as he’d looked at me and hadna hated me! To think as all that time we spent in the midst of the painted dragon-flies by the mere was true, as true as daily bread! When I called to mind the things he’d said, and still more the things he’d looked, I was like to swound. Dear to goodness, how I did sing, those early dawns, when the dews lay heavy after a ketch of frost, and the corn rustled and stirred in the wind of morning!

  When we went out, the leaves of the late-blooming white clover would be folded tight, and the shepherd’s hour-glass shut. I’d watch them, in the minutes I took for rest, opening soft and slow like timid hears. Then Mother would come with our nooning, creeping over the fields in her black like a little sad-coloured bird, and sometimes singing Barley Bridge in her old, small voice, yet was sweet. Then, after the noon-spell, through the long, blazing evening (for with us all the time after noon is called evening) I’d watch the shepherd’s hour-glass shutting up again, and the white clover leaves, folding as the dews came. We took turns to go whome and milk, then we’d have our tea in the field, and at it again. All the while I thought of Kester, as would soon be working at the coloured weaving in the great city. But when my heart said he was working for me as well as hisself, I hushed it, saying that it was but his flaming look that made me think it, for he hadna said it, and so it was only that the wish fathered the thought. But I did dream of the fifty pounds I was to have, a great fortune, it seemed. And I did plan how I’d get to be cured as quick as might be, so when Kester came back after his time away I’d stand afore him with as proper a face as even Felena, though I hoped not so forrard. [. . .]

  It was very early when the waggons began to roll into the fold, with a solemn gladsome sound, and each with its own pair of horses or oxen. Each farmer brought his own men and his own waggon, and sometimes he brought two. The teams were decked out with ribbons and flowers, and some
had a motto as well, such as, ‘Luck to our Day’, or ‘God bless the Corn’. It was a fine thing to see the big horses, with great manes on their fetlocks, groomed till they shone like satin, stepping along as proud as Lucifer, knowing very well how long the waggoner had been, a-plaiting their ribbons. The oxen were good to see, also, for their horns were all bedecked, and about their necks were thick chains of Sweet William and Travellers’ Joy and corn. Miller came among the first, with his gig and the old coach horse, the best he had, poor man. And very good work they did, too, for it’s surprising what a deal you can get onto a gig if you put a set of wings on top.

  It was time for me to go and give the folks welcome, so I got Miller’s Tim to mind the trestles, and left him with a big meat patty, sitting at the top of one of the tables, with half the patty in one cheek, ready to drive away birds and cats and dogs, and even goblins out of fairyland, after the patty.

  Mary Webb, Precious Bane, 1924

  Threshing Day

  Then came August, I recall, and

  Bromley Wood, a snuggled hamlet

  dozed in the stifling warm.

  By faraway Birchwood a bird-scarer

  rent the languid teatime hum

  with a brusque report

  and nearer, the indignant crow

  patrolled the mossy cottage roof

  excavating grubs with a twig.

  On the verge, idle now, stood

  the old threshing machine

  blanched from livid scarlet

  to dusty, peeling pink

  the steady meter of rod, shaft

  and crank, dwindled to silence

  now home to the swift

  gathering sustenance, force

  for the looming southward hegira.

  Rain arrived in fat, fragrant

  smudges, which the beaten earth

  absorbed like blotting paper

  a sudden interjection

  a jerk of the shoulder

  prompting the question . . .

  What would the threshers say

  their brawny arms etched by straw

  backs bent under the heavy stook

  like so much tribute at Ceres’ altar

  long-since dispersed like chaff

  on a century of summer breezes?

  What would they think of us today

  this threshing day? Do they know

  the thing we have become?

  Julian Beach, 2016

  High summer on the North Wessex Downs and the wheat field crackles and pops like a bowl of cereal as it ripens under the sun.

  The down’s broad flank is in full sun and we seek the refuge of a small hawthorn, flopping down on the chalk grassland among the high, pylon whine of grasshoppers, hoverflies and bees. The short, springy turf is a riot of rich and fragrant colour.

  Here are clustered bellflower, centaury and hawkbits, fine fairy flax, chalk milkwort and orchids, the delightfully named squinancywort and scabious, blue as Wedgwood china. Cinnabar moths flash flamenco skirt-wings of charcoal and scarlet and marbled white butterflies skip by like slivers of marbled icing. Here too is the heady, kitchen-garden scent of wild thyme and basil, marjoram and salad burnet. This close mat of tough plant life is best experienced at eye level, lying down so you can feel the hard curve of the hill beneath, the thinness of its layer of grass and soil, where it is also easy to press your face into the earth and breathe in an old ocean’s worth of summers, the sun’s stored heat emanating from it.

  We head uphill again, pausing for breath to watch a hovering kestrel, pinned to the poster-blue sky by its eye. Below is a panorama of harvest in progress. The barley fields ripple like the pelt of a moving animal in the stiff, warm breeze. Great long-shadowed straw megaliths stand in already harvested fields, whilst others are scored by thick tramlines of straw waiting to be baled. The country is a golden parquet floor.

  In the afternoon, the combine turns into the field behind the house with an excitable roar. We watch from the garden gate as it greedily gathers the crop to its blades; a gobbling monster fanning dusty chaff like a desert storm. We wait to see what flees from it. Rabbits, from all directions. And, as the machine turns for the last stand of crop, a young fox canters off towards the wood, glancing back disdainfully over its shoulder at a rude awakening.

  The young buzzards that keep up a day-long mewing to their parents descend on other, suddenly easy prey. One carries off a grass snake, which dangles limply like a length of rope, while its sibling tackles a rat, in situ.

  We let a respectable amount of time pass after the machinery leaves the field – and then the fun begins. First, we are out on the edges of the long golden windrows, furtively filling sacks with armfuls of straw for the animals. A neighbour across the field is doing the same – a sort of modern gleaning for us Estate cottagers. It is a small, insignificant amount, but it feels naughty all the same.

  And then we run: leaping the heaped, orderly rows in a steeplechase, the dog flying ahead of us. I have done this for almost every year of my life – and so have our children. It’s a sort of personal harvest celebration. We return to pat any incursions back into shape and, breathlessly laughing, leave the field. The field-edge shadows are already breeding tawny owls.

  After dark we go ‘lamping’ for wildlife in the Landrover, specifically for the owls that drift in to take advantage of suddenly bald, exposed, vole-rich prairies. Gold dust hangs in the air.

  We drive slowly with an eye on the fence line that divides the stubble from the downland and the careful, measured sweep of a million-candle bulb in careful hands. Almost immediately we spot our first barn owl. Poised on a post, it turns its heart-shaped face to us, huge, black, light-gathering eyes unfathomable dewponds either side the feather covered beak. It bobs its attention between us and the ground, its white chest a subtle contrast to its lightly toasted, warm apricot back, feathery hocks meeting above turned out toes.

  We leave it hunting, only to come across another, quartering the stubble in wavering, moth-like flight, rowing steadily through the lamp’s beam. Its big convex face is tilted like a satellite dish to the ground, listening hard for the squeaks, squabbles, rustles and reorganisations of small, suddenly exposed animals. It glows in the lamp’s light, ignoring us, a halo of barley dust glittering around it.

  In our second field, the sweep of the big lamp takes in the furthest of the loaded trailers. There is a pair of tawny owls on opposing corners. They are like bedknobs above a mattress big enough to conceal a dried pea to test a princess.

  All the while, distant and close the combines roar into the night with the sound of a billion bees, the big swing of lights as they round the night headlands, a facsimile of the sunlit glint of horse brasses on the turn of a hardworked furrow.

  Our last owl of the night is our third barn owl. Right on the far side of this 2,000-acre estate, it foots a freshly caught rat on a fence post, affording us the merest glance before bracing to pull and stretch its meal to the full height of its body. The owl’s balance is compromised with the effort and as it rocks back on rear claws that grip the wooden post, its hairy toes digging further into its prey for purchase. We are just metres away.

  This bird’s feathers are wheatfield gold, dappled grey and spotted, as if the pin in the wing were still visible. Its beak and feet glisten darkly with what is probably blood. Before we leave it to its meal, it throws back its head to gollop down a chunk.

  In the morning, the bales are tractored off the field behind the house. Even though I know the plough will go in before long, I hope for winter stubble and its attendant wildlife. The season begins, subtly, to change. The light is more nuanced, the days quieter, fresher and, in this landlocked county, the breeze somehow has the salt, ozone tang of the sea in it.

  Nicola Chester, 2016

  High Summer

  I never wholly feel that summer is high,

  However green the trees, or loud the birds,

  However movelessly eye-winking herds

  Stand
in field ponds, or under large trees lie,

  Till I do climb all cultured pastures by,

  That hedged by hedgerows studiously fretted trim,

  Smile like a lady’s face with lace laced prim,

  And on some moor or hill that seeks the sky

  Lonely and nakedly, – utterly lie down,

  And feel the sunshine throbbing on body and limb,

  My drowsy brain in pleasant drunkenness swim,

  Each rising thought sink back and dreamily drown,

  Smiles creep o’er my face, and smother my lips, and cloy,

  Each muscle sink to itself, and separately enjoy.

  Ebenezer Jones, published 1843

  In July and August, the fields and hills often seem hushed – almost arid – in the heat. Greenness turns parched or brown and only the yellow-hammer twitters in the hot afternoon. But by the river there is no such stillness. This is the river’s bountiful, luxuriant time. Along the banks, great clumps of flowering plants spring up and bloom like a herbaceous border – purple loosestrife, the yellow daisies of the fleabane, fluffy, pink, hemp agrimony, great willow herb, the huge white whorls of the great water dock, and dark-red, tough, square-stemmed figworth (which is pollinated almost only by wasps). They make fine cover for the fisherman to stalk a rising trout. In the water itself – in the stiller reaches – other, fantastic plants are in bloom: the yellow water lily, its long stalks trailing deep – sometimes several feet to the bed of the river. This is the lily called ‘brandy-bottle’, from the shape of the big, green seed-pod when the flower is over. Close by there may be arrowhead (so-called from the shape of the leaves rising clear out of the water), with its white, purple-eyed flowers branching out of the main stalk in little clusters. The flowering rush likes still water, and here it puts up its head of frail, deep-pink blooms (three big petals alternating with three small ones) on a stalk which is often as much as three feet tall. The crowfoots (or crowfeet?), of which there are many, are water buttercups, though their flowers are white and their leaves submerged; and the hornwort and mare’s tail (which are more likely to be found in canals, perhaps, than in rivers) have a strangely old, prehistoric look, as though they once grew in dinosaurs’ swamps long ago.