Midsummer

Another summer solstice, another year turns. Trying to avoid the heat I went out early this morning to meet a friend for coffee. When I left the house Kier Starmer was still prime minister, when I returned he was not. In past years I have conducted my own little witchy ceremonies for the summer solstice or Litha as it is known in the pagan tradition. I have slightly self-consciously woven myself a flowery garland and sat staring into the flames of a campfire in my back garden, but this year it felt ridiculous to add more heat. Instead I sat in the shade of the evening and listened to my son explain the taxonomy of plants, fresh from his first year of a biology degree. We slowly sipped some cider, as some traditions should be kept.

There is such abundance in my garden right now, the cliché of a midsummer garden is a ‘riot of colour’, but that’s hackneyed, and surely too violent. Given the mood of the UK I don’t want to dwell on riotousness right now. Explosion is not much better, although that’s what some of the plants remind me of, the catmint shooting and sprawling light blue flowers is a slow motion firework. In previous years it has been kept down by a series of neighbourhood cats, seen queuing for their turn to roll and wriggle in ecstasy. Just say no kits. This year with no such restraint it has gone wild, to the bees delight. The heat makes me crepuscular, creeping out with my watering can early morning and late in the evening, feeding thirsty pots, worrying for my trees, hoping their roots are deep enough. Every day there are more strawberries, although I am in competition with the woodlice, often reaching for a perfectly ripe looking specimen, only to discover it has been efficiently hollowed out by a scuttling mass of insect life. Although on closer consultation with professor Google, I discover that woodlice are in fact not insects but terrestrial crustacea.

One morning last week I sat in the garden writing my journal and spent time admiring all the feathery tops of the grasses, such variation and delicacy. One patch of grass had tips just glanced by the early morning light, with the remainder in shadow. As I watched, a breeze caught the grassheads and a golden spray of pollen danced and dispersed. Combined with the pair of green shield bugs to my left, enjoying a conjugal moment in the hollyhocks, I suddenly realised that I was sitting in the middle of an orgy. Biology was happening all around me. If we’re measuring the value of my garden by biodiversity metrics, I’m incredibly wealthy.

Photo shows ox-eye daisies in my front garden wild patch. It was pretty cool to watch the sunset last night looking over my very own section of meadow, very midsummery. This week I have been reading Octopus: The Secret Market and the World's Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. It narrates the real life story of Sam Israel, a fraudulent hedge fund manager who becomes enmeshed in conspiracy theories about a "shadow market" that secretly runs the world. A different kind of wild to the stuff I write about! Pretty jaw-dropping.

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