Monday 20 May 2013

the bluebell wood

pictures of england - Coton Manor


Over every inch of wood, as far as and even beyond its boundaries, the bluebells are also thickening for flower, a million spikes with dark hearts of bud and here and there a breaking out of petals.  They cover the rich sodgy wood-soil like shining green reeds, everywhere.  Among them and perhaps because of them there are few primroses, fewer anemones.  The bluebells crowd out everything, drown the whole wood-floor with great pools of flower until the trees, in May, seem to be standing in deep lakes of liquid mauve.

Extract from 'Through the Woods' by H.E. Bates