wild flowers
It’s easy to forget sometimes, when life is rushing around you, just how beautiful the world is… as it happens, oblivious, around you. I spent this evening with my little friends Abi and Ella, daughters of my ever-laughing friend Tracy. So she was there too alongside my sing-song-chatterer-Marie (who cooked for us) and her boyfriend James (who tried to keep this hareem of ladies under control…and failed).
After dinner Marie very wisely suggested a walk: such a nice warm evening that we headed into the Oughton Nature Reserve, just in what we were wearing, No coats needed in Hitchin tonight: just dresses, vest tops and cardigans and the girls in their shorts.
Abi and Ella are brilliant. They know how to have fun and be silly. But best of all they keep you in a moment for a little bit.
We spent a good twenty minutes trying to master the best technique for blowing away every single little snowflakes topping wild dandelions in just the one puff. Argued about whether or not you should spit on a dock leaf to make it work (I say yes). There were a couple of nettle stings: quelle surprise. Maybe shorts aren’t the thing to wear on a summers evening after all.
We walked down paths shrinking smaller each stride as those dastardly nettles close in on either side and parasols of tiny white flowers bloom into maturity atop tall unassailable weeds. I did piggy back duty at Ella’s behest and Marie hoisted her into tree where she admired the long views and the setting sun before disembarking all by herself. Abi set us off playing ‘It’ but my legs (still aching from yesterday’s Mid Week League Race) were not such willing participants. So then we played the ‘stick the sticky weed game’, whereby you stick the sticky weed (surprise!) onto people who may or may not notice (usually best to stick to people you know) . This then morphed into ‘let’s all disopose of our sticky weed responsibly, by using it to cuff James’ (as if he needed the odds any more stacked against him).
There was the hyperactive Jack Russel (Abi not a fan) and a tall majestic white haired, blue eyed Great Dane that we passed twice (Ella commenting how sad she looked: a real old girl). I caught a ‘bouquet’ of Bishop’s Weed thrown by the girls. Of course, you have to leap about and be totally over the top about this (in reccognition of the fact that maybe one day you might actually get married after all), and celebrating with such style means that you won’t see the man waiting patiently at the kissing gate until it’s too late: “You don’t get out much do you?”. Ahem.
The sun is sinking lower as Abi, Ella and I dawdle on the walk back home, Ella still blowing dandelion heads into next week; Abi attempting to bring my hair under some kind of control, even as we walk.
I pick wild flowers: parasols of tiny white, a lilac rash, two drops of purple, sunshine yellow buds, an aqua blue leaf and another, worn-to-russet-at-the-edges. Oh and a burnished rosehip.
They’re on my kitchen table now. To remind me. Keep looking. Spend a bit of time dawdling. There’s always something worth looking at. Just reemember to look. 