Nature’s day. Today was the day the dog and I agreed that the grass was too long, too wet, too full of thistles and nettles. We went the long way round to the field. Detour an annual inevitability, we are already dancing with traffic at the edge of the road, defeated by blind lunges into thigh-deep verge growth. My thighs, of course. The dog found her world transformed, meadows and paths to slug-infested cavern. Matted bracken, willow herb and fox glove. A winter’s contemplation and then, whoosh, one May weekend and there’s nothing but deepest, greenest foliage, mighty and unstrimmable.