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Afternoon walk

It was our intention to go into Edinburgh today.  We were going to wander up the Royal Mile and take a last look at the antics of the Fringe festival as it comes to close this weekend.  I was amused by some of the craziness I saw last week when I was in town but I didn't have my camera with me.  It had fallen out of my bag and was lying on the front seat of the car back at the railway station!  Anyway, this morning it was raining and there was a mist drifting through the wood so a trip into Edinburgh didn't seem like such a good idea.  We will go tomorrow instead.

Happily the mist and murk cleared after lunch and the sun came out, so Tilly and I went for a gentle walk up the drive and around a couple of fields.  It has been a while since we went that way and the crops, which were burgeoning last time, have now reached the point where they are on the verge of being harvested.  The rapeseed pods are still green but bulging at the seams and there is a field full of fat broad beans.  I am not quite sure what the beans are used for since they are clearly not destined for the chillers of Waitrose or Sainsburys.  The flowers of the young plants are very sweet smelling and fill the evening air of early summer with a wonderful fragrance, thereafter the plants become rather brown and unattractive!
The undergrowth is lurching towards that tawny time of year.  The grasses are a pale straw colour and the docks a rich rust.  The two together have an air of Piet Oudolf about them. (http://www.oudolf.com/piet-oudolf/gardens/private-gardens/bury-court/bury-court-6
We walked past a pine wood.  It always has a Lord of the Rings atmosphere, or the wild wood in Wind in the Willows.  I usually avert my gaze because I find it rather creepy but on a warm sunny afternoon the smell of pine resin is rather wonderful and the interior looks benign enough.  


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