Dave Borthwick

& the moon rises squint & cloud occludes the stars you came out to watch & the forecast wrong & all a shrug & on you go

& despite the brood & heavy humidity flat calm, no hint of forecast weather, there is a shifting to settle - & on different frequency, the infraordinary: 3 feral kittens counted now - all well-fed & under shorn fleece, all fine, all fit for storm

ha-ha, did not see that! - thank you

& wide skies making maps of blown seed - silage-scalped fields of lammastime overseen by feather of moon - marsh woundwort (you think) by the burn's bridge & the feral cat vanishes but you catch sight of 2 kittens (1 marmalade, 1 black), retreat slowly to inform the house

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/kimd...

This is the opposite of clickbait. You have nevertheless passed on your affliction by digital osmosis.

& an old quarter day incomplete without a fire : hello/goodbye Lammas

Lammas, the height of summer & its slide - heat stress or what you do not know but everywhere overcompensation - brambles blackening over-early, haws & rowan ripening red, oaks acorn-loaded,elderberries pellets of black against blue

have never got Simon Jenkins nor where he is coming from...

oooh. Sold.

& you miss sunset because of a small feral cat - who forages vole successfully - & this is last of July, a 2nd silage cut & air pungent with it, shorn sheep cropping as you return & you tune in to their crackle, current of cropping chopping out from the gate

keep coming back to this one - similar but not-as-bad here, though it resonates

really like 'shy dream' - thank you

especially so as it is an opportunity to celebrate two female Astronomers Royal, which is even better news!

...mess about without systematic method until it sort of pleases me...!

sorry to be a dickhead, but this story has been a stone in my shoe today. Catherine Heymans has been Astronomer Royal for Scotland since 2021. The story is not strictly UK-accurate.

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social

& river at minimum flow, densegreen of riparian mirrored in halllucinating gloam - young fallow deer wobbles & wavers midstream, unsure of the world - & possibly the 2nd of its moons falls to set as you make for the gate, grateful for growing dark

& stubblefield turned over early, given to red soil & gulls, cracked spill of barley in the lane & thistles gone over to drifting down - corner of the field dirt-coloured buzzard watches & keens, you watch rain approach spun through turbines, & kick dry tractortread clods which explode & drift away

thank you

2/2

to the coast speckled wood on approach & buzzed by common darter reaching small woods of glasswort on the merse & wash-in with larger footprint young wheatear above meadow breeze pushing at the blades of yr back 1/2

& time of the gradual haggarding, summer erring towards weary half - soft gloam but lights gain greater meaning again

& even bales moved by the time you are out, wide field an empty store (woodpigeons, jackdaws & deer have moved on), you lie on the stubble & sway on sharp mattress, gold sky paling & thickening grey as true night finds again a first foothold

& yr eyes drawn to window all the long afternoon harvest in the peripheral coaxing to centre behind the small blackthorn (edge of vision all year) grain pours into trailers & bailer skirts (tractor blaring techno) the whine & thump of so many rhythms

& there are moths feeding on ragwort that sways in fresh & welcome breeze. it is the day ewes & lambs were separated. they remain within earshot & bray loudly & pitifully fieldbreadths. light wavers a breath above windbreak. bleating follows you home.

& this rolling stormweather a rumour of dark, chips of light in the hills & standing starkness of trees weighting down the groundsheet of summer

yeh would agree totally with Wendy

distance of horizon lost to haar, of a receding tide, of rocks that suddenly shapeshift to seal - of the sky you scan, the osprey high above rivermouth losing itself to firth