One of nature’s jump champions

BUTTERCUPS and butterflies – two Speckled Wood butterflies waltz around one another in spirals in the morning sunlight under the beeches across the stream as I step out into the yard.

Beyond them is a field of buttercups, golden as The Field of The Cloth of Gold. In 1520, the kings of England and France met to parley but attempted to outshine one another with tents and costumes woven from threads of silk and gold. It ended when Henry VIII challenged Francis I to a wrestling match and lost.

When I came back from a walk across the buttercup meadow, the seams on my boots were golden with pollen, and my trouser legs were wet with cuckoo spits where I had brushed against thistles and docks. Every thistle seemed to bear a cuckoo spit: it is a great year for frog-hoppers, the nymphs of an insect like a cicada, the grass-hopper creatures we hear singing incessantly at night on Mediterranean shores.