Moorland Summer.
Ling has been out for quite a while but the heather will be a little time yet. Everywhere in the lower countryside summer is lush. The meadows are thick with the rising grass. The brown fields have disappeared and the corn is up knee-high like the buttercups at the side of the stream. The trees are in full leaf, and in fact the first leaf waste has started. The rough hills are nearer the sun, but the air up there is colder and it takes time for the black, acid earth to come to life. One day the distant hills seem asleep and then all at once the blue and purple tinge is there and the heather is out in full bloom. It is an extraordinary transformation, like the rising of young ferns or the rusting of bracken at the beginning of winter. However long summer may seem down in the valley where charlock grows and honeysuckle drapes the hedge, it is short and much more beautiful up on the moor. Summer will come soon up there when the newly- fledged curlew takes the air and the moorland gull deserts the nesting ground.
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