At first light, the scent of ’76 hangs in the air, a reminder of that endless summer burning itself into autumn, just like this one. I first caught a sniff of it walking home one sweltering evening in the June heatwave and said: “Too soon, too soon.”
Now the toasted aroma of spent grass is everywhere – on crispy playing fields, straw village greens, and these scorched tawny meadows of the combe. Scattered groups of cattle have their heads down here. For them I think eating the grass must be like consuming a Pot Noodle before the water is poured in.
And then I find the outflow of one of the hillside’s springs. Though it registers nothing more than a seep, it is nevertheless a pocket oasis of comparative lushness, a blessing to a heifer’s eyes.
These cows know a thing or two; against the fiercest sun in that hottest spell, they fashioned themselves a long awning on the riverbank, chomping the trees, twigs and all, up to a browse line, then sheltered under the canopy. Clearly barely palatable, the alders survived this first onslaught, but even they were stripped out by mid-July. Cow licks tugged out the grass from below, hooves pounded the ground to bare earth. The adjoining path still wears a dried cowpat crust.
Beyond the gate, beyond the cows, one plant in particular defies the drought, striking for its sprinkling of vivid colour against the skeletons of umbellifers and wilting greens. Tansy grows in such localised profusion that it gives the immediate impression of great sprays of primary yellow buttons. Close observation confirms a dual identity in appearance. From the neck down, it displays fern-like leaves. But the aster family is there in its little bunched-together disc florets, each about a centimetre across, bobbled like compound eyes.
Richard Mabey’s magisterial Flora Britannica attests to tansy’s medieval lineage as an all-purpose, largely medicinal herb, ranging from the mildly toxic and purgative to its inclusion as bitter flavouring for an omelette. Another source claims tansy leaves were garlanded into an embalming wreath for the coffined first president of Harvard University. I think I might leave them for other mouths to sample.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
