Midsummer

Yesterday, walking on National Trust land above the West Dorset coast, I could find on hindreds of gorse bushes only a single flower. usually at this time of year they are a mass of vivid yellow.

As it was not

In past centuries, when man's efforts had only small effects on the natural environment and the workings of natural processes, poeple were immensely concerned to discober whether untoward natural phenomena were some kind of retribution for their misdeeds and much livestock was sacrificed in the effort to find out. Nowadays, when our natural environment is fundamentally shaped by our activities, past and present, for some it seems worries melt away if it can be thought that unwelcome or unprecedented changes in the natural world are not 'anthropogenic', and many keyboard strokes are expended in the effort to prove it.