Musing in the Shire.

I noticed that the thistles in Church Lane have gone to seed now. I think of the ubiquitous thistle not as the marker of the turning season, but as the harbinger. The neighbouring willowherb is still very much in the pink to remind us that the summer is not yet fully run.

On the other side of the hedgerow the wheat is uniformly gold and waiting only for a run of dry days and the harvest, while the tufted maize cobs in another field are plumping nicely. And the hedgerow itself is replete with fattening green berries hanging proudly off the elder bushes.

In a few weeks time the same berries will be black as coal. The willowherb will have turned to wool, the wheat fields will be empty of all but harsh stubble, and the corn cobs will be a thing of memory. And then the marker will be laid out for all to see.

In one way I find the cycle of the seasons rich and reassuring, but in another way they proclaim the twin troubles which haunt the musing mind: the grumbling issues of corporeality and mortality. And that is why I never come close to accepting that what I see and what I hear and what I feel and what I taste and what I smell, and even what I sense, is the whole substance of reality and my place in it.

And I fondly hope that the Lady B’s ghost reads this; it’s the sort of thing which I used to so like saying to her. No doubt such a hope is forlorn.