One of the joys of spring has been its shifting palette, the successive waves of colour that wash up on roadside verges: the early gold of dandelion and celandine, the purples of common honesty, bluebells and dog violets. Regal colours. Then, as those retired, the fields became awash in starlight: daisies, each a bright point of silver-white, as the blue pixels of forget-me-nots and speedwell glint from beneath the foaming cow parsley.
Wildflowers enter one by one, as in a fugue – each taking up the same theme in a different key: a polyphony of petals. In this way, floral voices come together in vernal chorus before dying away.
Down on the coastal path, I pinpoint the moment of transition from spring to summer to the blooming of the thrift. Last week was that time, here in the Northern Isles, as those tiny pom-pom heads burst forth in candyfloss colours, all along the salted shore. Thrift grows in short tufts, like licks of hair, sticking up at odd angles among the grasses and shrubs along the seafront. Some grow directly from the rocks themselves, finding toeholds in the cracks. Some share their beds with miniatures like scurvy grass – now past its best, its tiny white heads falling away to reveal taut green seed pods beneath.
The cushion-like outcrops of thrift pile up along the shore, stippling the high tide line and coming together in soft mats further back. Sea pinks, to give them their other common name, and they are: powder pink and bubblegum, raspberry and pink lemonade. Dolce.
As with the wildflowers, birdlife arrives and departs in carefully orchestrated arrangement. As the curlews and lapwings have fallen silent, the pipits and finches and stonechats have taken up the refrain. A few days ago, the great skuas arrived in concert. Known here as bonxies, they are the local heavies. They are dark and menacing, with a feline yowl, and swoop threateningly overhead. The bonxies – about the size of a herring gull, but bulkier – rough up the gulls until they sick up their lunch, then steal it. I’m fond of them, and their bullying ways. They are not fond of me.
Listen: the song of summer is sounding. A complex melody that shifts in tone and key every day. Tread pianissimo upon the path so that you might hear it.
