Imagine the breeze playing across your face, the sun warming your skin and the gentle sound of a bee buzzing by your left elbow. There is a waft of humidity and the scent of a thousand entwined stems and open petals fill your nostrils. You’re in a meadow, just sitting and thinking on a summer's day.
We all associate sitting in a meadow with the wider countryside, 'getting away from it all', not necessarily near our own homes. But the fact is, you can have that wonderful, lazy summer feeling (complete with the sound of buzzing bees and grating grasshoppers) in your own back garden!
But you probably knew I was going to say that didn't you?
Earlier this year we sewed a wildflower meadow with locally native seeds, and placed some rather charming benches along it, so that when the time came for ox-eyed daisies, ragged robin, cowslips, yellow rattle, kidney vetch and dead nettle to blossom, our visitors could get right up close and enjoy it.
A plethora of bee-life has moved in; red-tailed, buff-tailed, white-tailed, common carder, early and field cuckoo bumblebees buzz contentedly while you sit at stare into space (and the wider reserve).
It was easy to do, we just raked over the soil and sewed it over the surface - simple!