This is the weather the bracken likes, the time when it gets its own way and sometimes reaches taller than a man. Given the chance after a heavy shower it flops over the paths and wets your clothes. The warmth and the rain are good for many living things and gardeners know that weeds and slugs thrive in these conditions with even the most carefully tended plots likely to get overgrown. That's not a word that should apply to woods and areas classed as nature reserves except that the official paths and tracks that provide human access can benefit from attention. Even then I'm one of the first to get off the path and into the bracken and the bramble, for it's often there that the secrets will be found.
Places for nature should not be constrained by dubious claims made by the management lobby. The closer the woods get to a rain forest the better. The less evidence of human management the more mystery, the more raw natural beauty the more I want to explore. And it's where the trees make their own spaces and the creepers wind themselves up the trunks and along the branches, where forks become home to ground plants lusting for more light, where fallen trees are left with no chain-sawn limbs. The magic of a shaft of sun lighting up a small part of a darker scene helps to stimulate thoughts of the creatures that find a home in just these spots.
Bracken is only part of the life of the woods and it gets taller and denser when clearings are left. Out in the open progress through it is slow and care is needed when planting each foot. Once the trees are allowed to grow naturally in such places the bracken will resume its rightful place as just one of the elements. Here it dominates in July and August...
...giving deer a fine place to withdraw into away from most human gaze.
Thrushes and blackbirds leave purple droppings on walls and paths.....
......letting us know they've found that many of the best fruit are growing under the bracken fronds which only appeared after the fruit was set.
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