​A millennium ago, my parents and i were staying at a quiet farm in Seatoller and we  walked to Watendlath.   I was twelve and, in today’s hot sun, I wished I had the resilience of my girlhood self to slog up from Rosthwaite to Brund Fell and Joppelty How through high-summer bracken.  One summer there was a drought and I remember our farmhouse garden looking distressed.  But this was before the impact of Climate Change,  we didn’t have the extreme heat of summer 2022 and when you’re twelve it’s fine. 

​Our hopes are  high.  The date is right and a warm and humid morning with blue sky and bright cloud should favour butterflies.   Days of unsettled weather and intermittent showers see flowers tall and fresh.  Here is a window of opportunity, with rain to return later in the day. There is rain all night and the next morning is wet and windy so  butterflies will be unable to fly and feed.   For a few fine hours they dance on the fringe of  sunlit woodland glades,  flickering against shadows.  And seeking nectar from drifts of hemp agrimony and knapweed. 

In the extreme heat I thought upon butterflies, wondering if it suited them. I'll never know because  33 degrees didn't suit us and we couldn't face an uphill slog in full mid-afternoon sun on Tuesday 19th July. 
​After an overnight shower, Thursday was refreshing.  Raindrops lingered on vegetation and the morning was still and warm. Young sparrowhawk were food-begging in the canopy,  a heron flew over the catchwater. A dragonfly flew to and fro before us,  otherwise  all seemed quiet.  

 A bittern rose from the reed bed and flew before us,  its  legs trailing,  the sun enhancing its ginger brown plumage.   The interlude  imprinted in my mind's-eye.   In spring  bittern  were booming but I hadn't seen  one for some years and this was a splendid sighting, seeming long and leisurely. Bittern are secretive with camouflage adapted to their reed-bed habitat so it's rare to see them. Young eels are part of the bittern diet and an RSPB conservation programme targets both species.  

  'You should come every week to Smardale, no day is ever the same.' He's right, if only.
In a July heatwave   21 degrees was predicted for Cumbria. We drove through light rain and there was a fresh breeze on Smardale Fell where Bell Heather bloomed but Ling was in tight bud.  I know a bank where Grass of Parnassus grows. We were too early but found Bird's-eye Primrose in its second flowering    Swifts flew screeching over Scandal Beck  and a heron came down beside the beck whose banks were thick with Meadowsweet.

 
​Borrowdale Beck and water-tracks draining off the fells bring music to the dale. Puddles along the track reflect a skyscape where rain is never far off and the sun spotlights a distant fell, for a moment. 
Sand martins dart into  nest-chambers in the steep bank of the beck, fewer than last summer.  I hope their young have fledged and  are on the wing. Borrowdale Beck is a tributary of the River Lune. This is Shap Borrowdale with Borrowdale Beck flowing beneath the Shap Road (A 6) at Huck's Bridge.

Within the rich gold of an upland hay meadow there are subtleties of colour and structure.   Two key plants ensure biodiversity,  yellow rattle and eyebright.  Both draw sustenance from grasses,  tapping into their roots below ground in an invisible web.  What we  see is an intricate weave.  I love the aesthetic and I  focus on  detail within the tangle, looking up  into the flora of the hay meadow  through a screen of grasses.
​ Here goes.

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day.  Sandscale Haws is the perfect place to celebrate with MIdsummer Day falling on 24th June. 
Across the Duddon Estuary lie the Lake District Fells. The sand dunes unfurl  carpets of summer flowers  before us, with changing species and patterns.  When the sun is at its zenith the dune flora responds with a release of nectar and a wonderful herbal fragrance.                   

'You should be on Scout Scar,' he said, meeting me by chance. He's a runner and it's a favourite location for him too. Neither of us should be in town on such a day.
There was bright sun with a hint of fair-weather cloud- perfect for photographing veils of flowering grasses and the flora of the cliff-edge. Quaking grass is tremulous and intricate.  Dropwort has  pink buds opening into white flowers. I found them intermingling, with yellow hawk-bit and a shower of quaking grass seed-heads against the sky, the hazy fells in the distance.  

 The roe deer flew by me on a South West wind.  He came out of nowhere, as if he had leapt up the cliff-face to alight by the hollow where I  lay picturing flowers of grass against a blue sky. Momentary and magical.   A buzzard mewed and raven soared on the wind. 
This is the season of flowering grasses.  Ox-eye daisies grow along the cliff-edge and the wind shook the  flowers of quaking grass to and fro about their white petals. Lingering in my mind's-eye, the fleeting moment of roe deer, the wind-trembled grass of the cliff-edge. 
At this season the flora of the Scout Scar escarpment is glorious, and fast-changing. Fragrant white bed-straw and purple thyme mingle with common rock rose. Hoary rock rose has seeded, and vanished.   The deep pink buds of dropwort open into a froth of white flowers. Squinancywort appears, its white petals streaked with pink. 

In spring and summer I hear and glimpse redpoll in flight  whenever  I walk on Scout Scar. Groups of them flit amongst the scrub and small trees, rarely settling.
To study them, I come to Foulshaw Moss and immerse myself in the experience.  We settle into the hide and wait quietly.  A great spotted woodpecker calls,  a brood has left the nest this morning.  One appears on the far side of a feeder, only the tip of his head and tail visible.  Redpoll feed, heads dipped into the feeders and backs toward us.  

 
​What you'll first see when you find fly orchid  is several dark flowers on a slender spike.  Flowers are deep violet-brown, the sepals green, the plant  tiny.  It's found on calcareous soils sometimes in the shade of trees on rough, grassy ground.
Fly Orchid, Ophrys Insectifera. 'The fly orchid relies solely on insect pollination, so it mimics an insect in appearance and emits pheromones to lure the male into thinking he’s found a female. Trying to mate with the flower, he transfers pollen in pseudocopulation.'  Cumbrian Contrasts.   Lie on the ground and look closely into the flower and you'll begin to see how interesting it is.  Fly orchid mimics an insect,  specifically the female Gorytes wasp. I haven't seen a fly orchid being pollinated and wouldn't recognise the Gorytes wasp.

Below Scout Scar escarpment, down in the Lyth Valley. the farmer is taking a crop of grass for haylage. Patterns appear as he works and, from the cliff-top, I look out across a patchwork of pastures in shades of summer.  Rain is forecast for tonight so there's a sense of urgency. 
​The cliff-top is at its loveliest at this season,  the first week in June.  Hoary rock rose is its speciality,  abundant on the rock-face,  its lemon flowers only opening to bright sunlight.  Common rock rose lasts longer and is scattered more widely over the escarpment.

Odin’s ravens are poised  to fly  at dawn and scour the world to bring back news to the All Father.  We sit on Odin’s throne beneath  his ravens, Huginn and Munnin,  Old Norse for thought and memory. We’ll need both in contemplation of the Galloway Hoard displayed at Kirkudbright Galleries.  We’ll need curiosity and a willingness to consider afresh how Anglo-Saxon and Viking cultures interacted  in Galloway in  turbulent times.  

A morning of sharp showers and billowing sunlit cloud over Mersehead. Alone in the hide at the visitors' centre, we watch birds feeding at tree-stumps spread with seed. Come to the dining table.
Yellowhammer call somewhere in leafy  hedgerows merging with  banks of vegetation  spilling down to the path, providing  the cover the birds need in the breeding season.  Feeding the birds shows them in close-up and in detail. There are greenfinch, chaffinch, tree-sparrow and a stunning male yellowhammer.

A small boat lies out in the river, inviting us to venture over to the island and ruined castle, to explore and  immerse ourselves in the beauty and tranquillity of the morning. ‘I could swim out and fetch the boat, if you like,’ he offers. Jackdaws fly into niches high in the tower,  patterned like a dovecot.  A peregrine flies over the ruin, perhaps her nest is in the tower.  Doves wouldn’t last long with a peregrine about. 

​Mary Magdalene shows on the Ruthwell Cross, washing Christ's feet.  Surrounding the images is a Latin text and Anglo-Saxon runes.  In 700 AD Ruthwell was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.   We drove to this out-of-the-way little church to see the stone cross but I confess I was distracted.
The morning was sunlit with an ambience of lushness and May flowers.  The church looks out onto green pastures and the churchyard was alive with house martins who had built their nests up against  the corbels beneath the eaves.  We walked amongst the lichened tombstones, half-hidden to the birds which flew in low, calling all about us.   We watched them busy about their nests,  mending them, tending their broods.  Ruthwell is a low, little church and we were so close to the birds.

From a secret place looking down into the cliff face I have a perfect view of a male redstart.  Each morning in early May I listen for a cuckoo and, not finding him yet, I return to sit and contemplate this handsome male redstart.   I hear him singing across his territory and wait for him to return to his favoured perch.   I can't work out  whether he knows there are females listening to him, or sings simply in the hope of attracting them into his territory.  Then he flies from his perch in display and alights again, showing his colours in a fresh perspective. It's a bravura performance.

Early purple orchids  and cowslips appear in the grass.  Wych elm is thick with flowers, showing against a bright blue sky on a morning calm and still.  We note the tree, thinking to return in  July and look high in its crown for the white-letter hairstreak.  The wych elm overhangs a sheltered woodland fringe where we found  silver washed fritillary last summer. 
Swallows perch on a wire by Park End Farm, the sun discovering a sheen of blue on the throat and a warm flush on the breast.   Light shines directly onto the swallows, bringing out colours of their fresh breeding plumage in all its loveliness.
​

 Wear something bright, I'd requested. I wanted  a cover-shot for my new book with  my friend looking out toward Piel Castle.  She wore a cherry-red fleece but it was so cold she kept her jacket to hand. The wind did not drown-out the cooing of eider duck  returned to South Walney in their best breeding plumage.  Male eider are pistachio green on the nape, a flush of pink on the breast, and black and white plumage spectacular in sunlit flight.
21st April 2022 Eider are returned to South Walney.  How will weather, tide and season come together?