An outing to Holker Hall Garde3ns!  A scenic drive through landscapes I've known this millenium, but  out of reach this spring and summer, until today.  A first visit to these lovely gardens, and so  memorable. 
Herbacerous borders are fragrant and drenched with raindrops.  Fragrances of exotic and unfamiliar flowers. Then the morning brightens and the sun appears, bringing forth butterflies that flutter over the border of delicate flowers about the lawns.  

​​Being in the moment is the best thing,   In deep.
 
In the moment and mindful of all that has gone before,   here in this place,  for me and my friends, for others over time, over centuries as our stories interweave.

 For everything a season.   So where are the hawthorn berries?  I could find none yesterday on Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows- so I shall persevere. Has the crop failed?  Blackthorn has green sloes and juniper has green berries- juniper whose fragrance I love.
And if the hawthorn crop of berries has failed up here, what happened- or did not happen? 
There are floral motifs of the season.  Deep purple betony amongst the bracken, thyme,  lady's bedstraw and yarrow.  No idea where the name yarrow comes from.  Yarrow, milfoil, Achillea millefolium for its feathery leaves.   I like its compact flower-heads  in shades of pink and white and patterns  as its buds form and burst into flower.  Today, a moment of perfect symmetry. 

 Rain,  pervasive light rain and the fells are gone.
 A rabbit.  A linnet in an ash tree.  Swifts silent in cloudy skies.  A raven croaks.   Jackdaws call. 
On Helsington Barrows there's betony, thyme and self-heal, a raindrop palette of purples.  And fragrant lady's bedstraw.   Yellow flowers of hawkweed close against the rain. The elliptical leaves of mouse-ear hawkweed  pale and mouse soft,  mouse-ear hawkweed,  Hieracium pilosella.   The tiny petals of fairy-flax close tight to a fleck of whiteness. 
A morning of close-ups since the fells are lost in rain-cloud,  butterflies are sheltering from the rain.  The lush green of mid-July after rains, after drought. 

 When dark clouds gathered it took a while to enter into the spirit of the morning, its own spirit, not mine.   I heard linnet and redpoll in the scrub, busy rearing their young broods.  And a meadow pipit with a beak stuffed with insects gave a constant warning call to his nestlings, waiting for me to be gone.   Somehow they can  call without losing the insects they've caught.   I try to make out what the pipit brings to its brood for breakfast but the light is too poor.   It's so dark I can see little but if I stick it out something brighter will surely come. A metaphor for our times.

Where was the promised brightness?  Louring cloud  over    Scout Scar threatened  heavy showers.  I thought of  heading   home when I heard   lapwing and followed their call  through a scrub of hawthorn and gorse until I reached a dry stone wall  topped with a double strand of barbed-wire.  Finding a spot where I could see into the pasture beyond, I  searched amongst summer flowers  lush after rain, their constant calls guiding me to  lapwing parents with two chicks.

This July weather is so unsettled it's hard to know what the day may bring.   Saturday was predicted to be sunnier but the day was overcast and cloudy.  Few birds or butterflies on the wing  But rain brings forth flowers and we delighted in the flora of Heslington Barrows.
Insect populations diminish and the numerous anithills of the yellow meadow ant are not the floral hotspots they were some decade or more ago.  So we linger over an anthill thick in flowers of thyme with a mass of purple betony close by 

It's so clear I can make out the distant waterfalls of Stickle Ghyll  and the gloomy cleft of Dungeon Ghyll.  Pools of light and shadow over the Langdale Pikes.  My heart is in the fells . A day of vistas and Sunday’s strong winds ease through the morning.
‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.’ Butterflies will choose a sunny glade, a sheltered spot where warm air lingers over flowers rich in nectar, Their favourite bramble and thistle  are on today's menu.  
 A hint of blue at my feet, like the petals of a flower.  A long stem of seeding blue moor grass, not petals but wings.

A glimpse of secret lives-  that's the best there is, a thrilling glimpse.  If we hope for more we delude ourselves.  Wildlife has its own imperatives, distinct from ours.  
In early spring, I listened to a stonechat singing and  his display flight won him a mate.. Through the season I've followed their progress. Alarm calls alert me to their presence and I always stop to see what I might discover.  And on a morning of louring cloud with interludes when the sun broke  through, here they were with their  brood. I knew they were raising a family but this was my first glimpse.