IT was late June and, although the solstice had passed, the evening air still had the feeling of ethereal magic that Shakespeare captured once and forever in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was light when my watch said it should have been dark; the owl in the window of the barn sat, moon-chested, as shooting swallows dipped in and out of their rafter nests behind her, their chattery day’s work not yet complete. At the farm pond, three red-poll heifers stood motionless, water dripping off their whiskers, as if waiting for the start of some drama of which they were unaware.
The air was heated, danced a nocturnal slow sarabande, as bumblebees continued their anointing of the blossoms of the briars at the entrance to the farmyard. (The bramble patch no one had thought, or wanted, to clear.) Everything was bathed in a rosy glow from the crimson sunset, which reflected off the primeval red clay of the farm track and the blistered red paint of the corrugated iron of the barn. Out in the meadows, the mechanic chirruping of the grasshoppers.
