Scents of flowering wild plants fill air

WILD plants have flowered extravagantly this summer.

Perhaps the successive hard winter was the cause. Blue islands of tufted vetch colonise the verges, stonecrop is like pink icing on the tops of old walls and the downy heads of meadowsweet bow over the country lanes like wisps of candy-floss on stems a metre tall.

The meadowsweet flowerets fill the air with perfume. The warmer the day, the more their heavy scent pervades the air. It is almost soporific. Walking the back-roads on warm afternoons one could be tempted to lie back against the ditch like an old-fashioned tramp and snooze an hour away.