The Shire in July.

Maybe I should say that the waving barley on the lea which runs down to the river from the Harry Potter wood is now mostly golden and coming close to full term. Maybe I should add that the wheat which predominates on the further side of the Shire is still green but turning a lighter shade. And maybe I should also remark that the maize is growing well to augur a good harvest later in the year.

Maybe I should mention that the meadowsweet is scenting the air on Church Lane at the end whereon it is plentiful, and that the elder has bloomed profusely this year to promise a harvest of berries sufficient to fill a million bottles of elderberry wine.

Or, on a less optimistic note, maybe I should note that the Shire has become strangely lacking its usual array of birds. I’ve been into the Harry Potter wood several times over the past few weeks and heard not a trill, a whistle or a cheep. There are no crows haunting the maize field between Church Lane and the Lady B’s erstwhile abode. The solitary blackbirds and robins which normally skip back and forth from hedgerow to hedgerow are notably absent, as are the ubiquitous gangs of sparrows which usually hold their delinquent courts at the bottom of my own lane. Even those pesky varmints, the wood pigeons, are missing, apart from the few which still invade my garden to raid the bird feeder.

Is this an omen, a manifestation of climate change, or merely a feature of July which I haven’t noticed before? I suppose time will tell as it always does.

But at least Venus is an evening star once again, and as long as the bright star in the west continues to grace the horizon at twilight, all is not lost.