72 micro-seasons 34

Janey...

Spiders webs - diamond- strewn hammocks slung between the brambles

Kit...

Common red soldier beetles make love on a bed of downy white sneezewort.

Beverley...

Clusters of elderberries are turning darkest purple. The starlings know.

Jane...

Meadowsweet still reigns lining the lanes with honeyed musky scent.

Helen...

I marvel at the miracle of clean creamy potatoes in dark soil. And oh! The hollyhocks!

73 micro-seasons 33

Janey...

In the hedges and meadows the mauve and blue tones of early summer give way imperceptibly to the yellows - fleabane, ragwort, hawkweed...

Helen...

Fellside like a great green whale, wet under darkening skies - but meadowsweet, frothy in the hedges, lights our way.

Kit...

My secret roadside patch of wild raspberries, which has gifted me sweet, snatched midsummer joy for years, has failed. Sun-starved, the fruit sits damp and greying on withered stems.

Beverley...

It’s a good year for the tall ones: Ox Tongue tossing gold coins all over the place and Great Burdock showing off over-large leaves and an abundance of spiky blooms.

72 micro-seasons 32...

Janey...

Diamond-raindrops sparkle on every leaf and spiderweb, in the unexpected sunshine

Helen...

Pale purple campanula: a misty blue haze in hedgerows which once held peeping primrose.

Beverley...

A Red Admiral flits its way among pink blackberry blossom.

Kit...

Claggy Jack is on the march - verges high with lace-topped hogweed suffocating now in a sticky green mesh.

72 micro-seasons 31

Janey...

Summer sunshine and purple cloud-shadows chase each other across the Sunday afternoon cliffs

Beverley...

Drifts of copper dock and silvery mugwort billow under purple clouds.

Helen...

At the front of the house - Peachy crimson and pink - July colours in the morning sun.

Jane...

Clear blue sky filled out with warmth.

Kit...

In the storm-blown garden rows of lettuces speckled with earth; infant apples, hard as bullets, litter the path.

72 micro-seasons 30

Janey...

Serried ranks of magenta foxgloves hug the cliff-face, the colour mirrored in the campion at their feet

Kit...

Briar Rose discards her love, one pale petal-heart after another ...

Helen...

Profligate grasses have gone to reckless seed. Rhubarb droops and rots. But hollyhocks hang on hard to tight buds on the brink of bursting.

Beverley...

Grey. Wet. All things sag. Only the tall and bright hollyhocks stand in protest.

Jane...

A soft blanket of cloud creates a sauna thick with honeysuckle, elderflower and rose.

72 micro-seasons 29

Janey...

'Mighty Day!' the Irishman remarked long ago, and we used the phrase for a decade, never dreaming of today.

Whitecaps in the breeze, on a sea of jade and indigo.

Beverley...

Warm winds ripple the blonding barley fields and the grasses; all in seed now.

Jane...

A crystal vase of full red roses bowing with the weight of their beauty.

Kit...

Last night a garden dinner tinged in Solway sunset; tonight the fire is lit, the wind is up, the cobbles are damp.

Helen...

Sycamore and oak in the fields- grazed to such neatness and uniformity - almost parkland in the wild.