Seas of green
The colours around our little village are just stunning. We’re sitting in the middle of some very rich farming country and as the early crops ripen there is mile after mile of rich green countryside everywhere you look.
Well not quite everywhere. Just to provide a contrast, there are also big fields of rapeseed or canola blazing out with a vibrant yellow colour and the occasional block of sandy-brown showing fields that have been ploughed but not yet planted.
Coming from Australia where most of our colours are much more sort of dusty, it’s hard not be taken aback by the blinding depth of the colours. They just don’t seem real to our eyes at first; they’re almost carton like in their consistency.
Making the contrast with home even more stark are the wildflowers that cluster on the edges of the fields and the cultivated flowers in all the gardens. Tulips in particular seem to be everywhere and their blobs of pinks, reds and yellows stand out beautifully against the green backdrop.
As you sit in the garden or walk about there is a constant deep buzzing sound. Back home that would mean flies and would have me twitching a hand in front of my face in automatic reflex. Here it is the sound of thousands of bees visiting all of those flowers. And on top of the buzzing there’s the chirping song of little birds.
We’ve spent much of the last two days just sitting outside enjoying the fact we can sit outside. We’ve had BBQs, swum in the pool, played games. The kids have run about and done their schoolwork projects on flowers and trees in the garden. All in the midst of the visible evidence that sumer is almost here.