N August dog-day afternoon, the very earth panting. I went up the farm track with a pair of shears, thinking only of cutting off the arcing tendrils of bramble in the hedge that whip every car and tractor that passes, including the cabless Ferguson and its blood-clot-faced driver. I started snipping the barbed tentacles, then looked at the hedge: nothing tells you that your summer is shot so much as a 6ft-high hedge in the country. Overhead, the sky might be blue and blinding and, after rain, there can even come a brisk gust of oxygenating air carrying a simulacrum of spring.
Right before my berry eyes
Aug 30, 2023
3 minutes
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