What next?

 After my last shocking visit to my field I've been rather reluctant to resume going there.  This turned out to be a pity.

It's a lovely morning, and I'm driving along earlier than I usually do: this is my tenth visit and three weeks since my last one.  With all the usual paraphernalia and my little beach chair I push a pathway through to my usual spot.  The grass is lush and tall; when I sit down it's almost as if there is a bank on which the grass is growing.  It's so tall it masks the rest of the field, and when I sit down it's taller than me.  There is something very lovely about this green enclosed world.  It's beautifully warm, there's a blue sky with soft clouds and birdsong.

3:22

My main priority today is to add drawings to my walking record.  I don't take the camera: the plan is to focus on this task and then if I want to take photographs to do that as a separate thing.  There are really lovely things to notice: at least nine different grass forms, red and white campions and poppies amongst the grass, dog roses in the hedge, their thick lower trunks a series of bold parallel lines with huge pairs of  thorns.  Bird song's in the air the whole time.  I'm marking this in a machine stitched rhythmic mark, my steps in the spring of linen thread.  My mind is working on a number of levels digesting what I see and thinking about translating sound and movement into stitch.

The grass and flowers have gradually reduced in height as I walk along.  Looking up my emotions are caught out in the same way as when I saw the hare last time, for the whole is now a prairie: brown and parched with occasional faded yellow rape plants.  No longer fresh green capped with a haze of yellow,  only frowsy seedheads clinging to blackened plants.  When did this happen?  How did it happen? Two tractor lines intersect at some point, possibly a clue.  How I wish I had kept to my routine.  A single skylark swoops into the field from the oak tree disappearing into a scruffy brown clump.  Is there still a nest? And how could the lush growth where I was sitting still be looking as it does?

3:23

3:24