We had no internet for a couple of days, got a lot of revision done. It’s just back and so is summer. 24°C yesterday 34°C today.

I have missed the damselflies, their gem-stone glow among the tree shadows along the stream, the sapphire and emerald, turquoise and garnet against the slow dark water. When the sky has been a stormy sea and the meadows an ocean of waving waterweed, I have missed the light.

Now the sun clouds have broken, tame as sheep and horses, and nothing trammels the summer sun, insect-light fill the shade. And in the sun among mauve banks of mint and pennyroyal, teasel and thistle, the flutter of butterfly wings, every shade of russet orange splashed with white and streaked with black, is so dense, their silence seems impossible.

The air moves and the poplars sigh like the sea, foaming on the strand, breathing butterfly and…