When it Will be Summer

It’s May, and starting to feel like Summer might be coming. The last few weeks seemed like they were colder than most of the Winter, but today the wood looks suddenly green and the sun is shining. I have for the past few years participated in the ‘Track a Tree’ project, and it is time for me to start recording the development of leaves on the particular tree I document each year. It is an ash and has consistently been one of the last trees to come into leaf over the last three years. Sycamores are in full leaf, as are hawthorns. Blackthorns, which usually flower before they leaf, seem to be doing the two things simultaneously this year. Oaks have come into leaf, though they still have that yellow-brown colour of their early leaves before the chlorophyll masks it with green. But the ash buds are still closed, big and black but unburst. Gazing up into the canopy for any sign of leafage all I can see is what looks like the first flowers which are easily missed and come before the leaves. I also need to record any flowering plants around the tree. Although this wood is always good for bluebells, there have never been any around this tree, but this year there are, as elsewhere in the wood the bluebells seem to be spreading from the swathes of them on the slopes to other areas. A little further along there are wood anemones, but not near enough to the tree to be recorded.

The tree is high up on the ridge at the top of the wood. Following the path along the ridge I look out for a kite’s nest that is visible in the top of one of the trees growing from the bottom of the steep slope, so the path is more or less level with the upper branches of the tree. The nest is there and when I train my binoculars on it I see the kite sitting on it, head turned towards me so that the beak is in profile. I watch for a while then go along the path to a seat surrounded by bluebells. Sitting in it I can see right across the valley and I spend a little time doing just that. The hammering sound of a woodpecker echoes through the trees then stops. A little later I see the bird flash through the trees below me. Is it now Summer? Not quite. When the ash buds open it will be, and that cannot be very long in coming. So I’ll come back to the wood every few days to record the bud burst, the partially and then the fully opened leaves, by which time the canopy of the other trees will have fully developed and I’ll be lucky to get site of the kite’s nest. Then it will be Summer.

CHANGE

After days of bright, clear air the pressure drops and the cold abates. Then the mist, missed, fills in: tiny water droplets hanging along the edge of the ridge. I watched them drift up the valley from the sea, dispersing into nooks, crannies, folds in the earth along the bottom then up the slopes turning the view grey as a heron, as slow as a heron's wing beat.

Mathafarn and the Dyfi Forest

Mathafarn

... and on that day I walked up behind Mathafarn, an eighteenth century farmhouse built on the site of the home of the same name of Dafydd Llwyd ap Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. This fifteenth century poet and prophet predicted the revival of Welsh fortunes and the defeat of the English. Legend has it that Henry Tudor stayed at his house in 1485 on his way across Wales to Bosworth in England where he defeated Richard III and so became Henry VII of England. Dafydd died not long afterwards probably thinking that his prophecy had been fulfilled. History knows differently.

It is said that some of the barns and other outbuildings still remain from the original house. But they were hidden from view as we climbed up from the valley of the River Dyfi to the forested hills above. The sun remained low, not far above the trees even at Midday, but the day was bright and cold as high pressure kept the air still and the temperature low. Clearing the conifers of the Dyfi Forest for a while, the open hillside has scattered trees with bare branches to contrast with the drab green of the Douglas Firs and Sitka Spruce of the forestry plantation. Here the twiggy outlines merged to a reddish mist on a distant hillside. In the far distance the distinctive ridge of Cadair Idris dominated the horizon. Such clear, cold weather in December, with the sunlight angled low, gives a particular quality to the light and the perception of colour. Everything seems so pellucid, as if the bright but subdued light is shining through the components of the landscape rather than reflecting off them.

Back amongst the enclosed conifer forest the suffused light is more densely poured over - and absorbed by - the green branches. The path winds down steeply through the trees and meets a forest road. Ditches and puddles glisten half way between a frozen and a liquid state. The Sun is behind the hills and the light begins to fade. Separate objects begin to cohere. We pass a ramshackle farm as we descend further to the valley floor and leave the forest behind. A dog barks. Light ebbs away as we pass Mathafarn. It is lost in the dim past. Did Henry Tudor stay there?

An unlikely piece of doggerel ascribed to Dafydd suggests he sent him on his way with a blessing:

Harri a fu, Harri a fo

Harri y sydd, hiroes iddo!

(Henry who was, Henry who will be / Henry who is, long life to him)

But all is now dark.