Hartington Meadows, Derbyshire: Amid a complex reticulation of stalks, stems, blooms and leaves, the right response might be to drop down before it In his glorious poem Haymaking, about a flower meadow, Edward Thomas describes how the fiery day “had a kernel sweet of cold” and “the white empty road was lightly strewn/With leaves”. The heat here, however, was unrelieved, and if the road was empty, it was also liquefying at its margin. Sweat banded my cap and ran in the creases at the backs of my bare legs, where, I noticed, the horseflies focused their attentions. Flower meadows, more than any other British land form, seem to be the most entangled and entangling places we have. They encircle and almost invade you with a sense of richness: not just the entwining hum of insect wings, nor the penetrating chromatic songs of the flowers themselves, but in an exuberant aura of living abundance. Continue reading...