The crisp air splashes like a cold face wash in the morning

While a bronze pheasant picks through dewy mounds of meadow

and Harry the brazen cat mews incessantly at me.

Rusted brown grasses spray fountains of tired gold

among isolated lemon yellow, purple and pink.

Bird song sails, bobbing above a quarry rumble

A goldfinch plucks fluff from a faltering thistle

and others feast among hawthorn berries and a bank of blackberries

3 nuthatches, tits, a tiny gold crest

and a dull olive green bird with a butterfly flash of yellow banded wings

maybe a siskin.

The garden is empty

While the wild bustles beyond the wall

Preparing for the oncoming cold

A damp morning

with fading purples and grasses wavering

Two Aster flowers open their tiny white fingers, pointing

a blackberry explosion is bursting over the wall top

out of reach.

Campsis orange gulps up for the sky.

and rich white Romneya hold high in the tired border

Among golden Knifofia brushes befitting only Trump’s toilet

The old trees hang apples red and dusky, crowded in clusters

And lank butterflies jagged about in search of seconds or thirds,

well past their best before blooms,

but still good

Old works breakdown

Poppy heads become skeletal sculptures

scoured of their skin by chitinous ribbons

New forms assemble

Briefly preserved in niches of absent stone

Dry yellows bake and patterns fall apart

Stems without support

A community of spaces among the ageing and senesced.

Apples swell and colour yellow and red

Some fall

A window of summer

welcomes Romneya yokes floating on paper white parasols.

Lobelia laxiflora crackle beside the simmering path

bordered by strong blue Agapanthus

And Fennel heads tier yellow

high speckled clusters hovering with hoverflies

Alchemilla collapsing in clumps

Strong Blue agapanthus unpeeling their paper cases

Burgundy daylilies and Polygonum anchor light white Epilobium

And apples swell.

Washed out ghosts of valerian break the skyline haze of Molinias,

linear grasses leaning off vertical.

‘Lucifer’ punches through the fading Phlomis

Crambe and Geraniums climb the dazzled jungle

Aeroplanes buzz

Four buzzards stack and swirl

beneath high sparse clouds

Orange and yellow

poppy and Phlomis, bleaching

Only strong psilostemon holding magenta

Goose grass, cow parsley, hogweed

Chase away the bears.

The verges are rising,

burning with ruderal Urtica

The borders are massing purple and white

Calm enough for bee business

They buzz sweet rocket, Centranthus, Euphorbia

While hawthorn foams at the shores of the ocean

of dandelion ghosts and buttercup constellations

Red campion and bluebells

Nodding with the weight of spring spent

Cow parsley and freshly cut meadows

Bright and beautiful after cold rain yesterday

The sun flattens the greens

and washes out birdsong

A red kite clambers up through a thermal

to hang ‘M’ shaped and daubed with white

Distant pheasant

Proximal, sound from every tree

Blackbird looped trill and titter

Chippling chip and corkscrew chatter haha

Trill introduced comic tonal whistle

Beak acrobatics too fast for my brain

The colours are coming.

Allium hordes scuffling with tufted purple crew cuts

And Nectaroscordum unsheathing upturned chocolate crowns

Blues, white and piercing paeony pink

leaking pools of intense lemon Euphorbia

Shuttlecock ferns stretch furry coils like feathered ladders

Reaching for mossy trunks

The trees are leaved now

Though some still half naked

The apples in underwear, pink and white

Slowly dressing in light tender greens

On the secret side, in the old fishponds

A submarine pheasant nods through the deepening grass

Frothing with buttercups and cow parsley

And brave roses peep against the warm walls

Calm and Sunny

Great tit see saw

Jackdaw caw caw

Mossy apples like mediterranean olives

Their sunlit trunks become the stone walls beyond

A tufted beige bee sample buzzes

the Pulmonaria, fading in the sun

and two lovebirds Columba palumbus canoodle in the corner bamboo.