Nature’s harvest, food for thought

MORE often than not, this summer, we wake to skies as peerless blue as a hedge sparrow’s egg.

I step out through the French windows onto the gravel of the courtyard just to greet the day and sometimes we breakfast on the balcony above, looking across at the field of the old estate through a gap between the tall beeches on the other side of our boundary stream.

As if put there by some great movie-set designer, two horses, one large and white, the other small and black, graze together in the ankle-deep buttercups. All around them rabbits nibble the grass, bask at full length, or keep watch. They often forage in pairs, one standing alert on its hind-legs, ears popped up, while the other basks or grazes beside it. When I look again, they have changed roles. I never thought rabbits could be so co-ordinated.