Glimmers Of Enchantment

breathing into a deeper life

And the pale seedheads – like stars –
of the alliums, and the dark eyes of
rudbeckia, how they sway together
as the wind whips round, mingling,
full, and darkly shimmering.

Andrea Skevington, from ‘Winter Seed Heads’

Seed ‘fairies’ on the heath, 15 July 2024.

Hello again, my lovely ‘between the moons’ friends.

I was pondering what to share with you this time, when an old memory was jogged by the sight of myriad wild foxglove seed heads. This year the spires have grown taller than I’ve ever known them, and now in mid-July they’re filled almost from top to bottom with knobbly seed cases, every single one of which is a perfect little miracle.

If, a few weeks ago, you’d walked to the heath along the sandy track that winds through the gorse you would have swooned at the sight of hosts of these foxgloves as you brushed past them on either side. Last year there were fewer, but their biannual cycle seems to have triggered a breathtaking spectacle this summer. So much so that I’ve had to resist the urge to photograph them every time I’ve stepped out of the cottage. They seem to be everywhere, whether on the wild edges or deep within the woods.

Biblical rain coupled with the natural order of things has now turned those tall fairy spires into a series of graceful bends and arches, each crowned with a fistful of freckled bells, crayoned in white and every shade of pink.

When I’ve gone out early I’ve tended to head to the beach for a quick wander before the day gets going. So, until a couple of days ago it had been a while since I’d passed that way, and admittedly the swift passage of the season came as a bit of a shock. I had to stop mid-step and wonder afresh at the breathtaking beauty of those seed pods.

Have you ever looked closely at them? I hadn’t, until the summer that I started my foundational year before applying for a degree course at art school. New students were set a sketchbook project for the weeks before the beginning of term, charged with choosing a subject from a broad list and exploring it in as much depth as possible. ‘Draw with anything and paint with unexpected media’, we were told - shoe polish and brown sauce were two of the suggestions. Collage, layer, print, make.

It was the same time of year that it is now. Seed heads and seed cases of all kinds were forming wherever you looked, and cried out to be noticed. And when you really study a single seed pod and try to recreate its essence (or as far as you can ever hope to) you soon find yourself utterly awed.

So, yesterday I retraced my steps to the heath with that exact intention. Or at least, with the intention of really taking in the seasonal transformation that’s happening even as new flowers open and it still feels like summer (well, sort of, despite the frequent grey skies and rain!).

The first place that caught my eye was the verge along the lane where alexanders reign from very early in spring until winter when their black umbiliferous seeds show sharply against bleached stems and grasses, and especially against snow. The seeds are already well formed but it was the colour that I found arresting. It was easy to chart the progress of the summer by seeing how the seeds start barley-yellow and gradually blacken, sometimes demonstrated very graphically on a single seed head cluster.

Gold-into-black alchemy, alexanders on the verge, 15 July 2024.

It was while I was marvelling at the alchemical process happening almost in front of my eyes - and wondering whether you actually could see the transformation happening in real time if you sat and stared for long enough - that I noticed what the white campion had been busy doing while my back had been turned.