The fresh greens of spring are now over and trees have filled out with lush deep green foliage. Already I have to lean over as I pass the car in the drive because the rowan has put out so many soft ferny sprays of leaf.
Strings of yellow keys – pairs of ‘helicopter’ seeds – are hanging from the sycamores.
A song thrush is taking food to a nest hidden in the beech hedge at the front of the house. A month or so ago, I watched them taking nesting material into the leylandii hedge next door but when the beech came into a leaf a week or two later they started nest-building there instead.