Throughout the last month of the summer, a purple blaze lit up the old heath. The heather grew this year like no other I can remember, fresh green fingers thrusting up out of the bare yellow sand. This toughest of plants thrived through months of drought then drenching rain, in the most unforgiving soil. The colour of the blooms stirred in me deep memories of the same plant in Lanarkshire: family day trips to the muirs, my grandfather sunbathing in his string vest, faither showing us wee boys how to dam the burn with stones.
Such evocations are at an end, the great show now all but over. A few heather sprigs still bear strings of mauve flowers, hanging out like droopy tutus. They are the last licks of flame from a dying fire, for the heath has begun to take on a toasted look. The plants are on the threshold of losing star-attraction status to the spiders which garland the hardening stems with their webs, becoming the mere tent poles to a silvery canvas. And the flowers are going to seed, with the dulled tips of their styles still poking out from the centre. The little globes are pale now, with only dabs of fading pink remaining. But the outer decay conceals an inner miracle. I used to think that these tiny balls the size of coriander seed were the actual seeds and was dumbfounded to be shown otherwise. On a winter's day 10 years ago, a warden's fingers split one open, spilling a shower of dark pepper dust into the palm of his hand. These specks were the true seed, a genesis in near invisibility.
That frosty morning, we snipped off the heads of sprays loaded with seedcases into bags, ready for them to be carried to an area of one-time heath that had recently been cleared of conifers. But before the seeds were scattered, they were given the herring treatment: smoked over a fire like so many kippers. The fiery baptism increased their chances of germination, a peculiar characteristic of this phoenix of a plant.
