By the River
Butterbur, raspberries and memories
Old Melrose and the Past. 30th Jul. 2023
Autumn has suggested itself, just gently; some softer morning light caught in the long grasses. Summer is still running and the rosebay willowherb hangs on to its seeds for now, but the fields are turning ochre, the hills becoming teddybear soft.
Occasionally there is a smell of forgotten fruit as things ripen in the damp warmth. Gaggles of wild raspberries have appeared, bright, coquettish and pert, even after a month of rain. By the river at Old Melrose I ate a punnet’s worth, slowly and for free. Then Humphrey and I waded through shoulder-high butterbur* to the water where, unexpectedly, the scent of the crushed leaves brought me face to face with my six year old self.Â
A July at home, long grasses soaking my legs, my thin cotton dress no use among the nettles. Summer’s peak is humid and thick, especially under the butterbur by the river. The umbrella leaves are beginning to let the rain in, but beneath there are still secret dens lined with warm, browning grasses. That musty air was my world and I took it in through my skin, knotting it into my hair and burying it in my lungs.Â
The same odour came like a lifeline when I was on my best behaviour, clean and brushed and playing on the tarmac between neat walls of leylandii. Then, the river behind the estate where my grandmother lived still had wild edges. I could smell those buffers of butterbur. When we went to feed the ducks with bright white bread, we had to stick to the grass. The chaos of leaves and stalks by the water was surely hiding dog turds, needles and shame. I stayed away, holding a churning confusion, and clung to the love of my grandmother.Â
She, like most grown-ups, liked a garden. Well-behaved blooms, neat edges, trimmed hedges, like a corset containing the body of nature. Beyond the painted fences there is a disintegration of order. Summer is juices running, something on the cusp of decomposition. Perhaps even discomfittingy erotic when we are trying to hold ourselves together in this world. But what if we loosen the stays and let the garden breathe?
This month’s rain has drawn a wild fertility out of the soil and I let last year’s fennel, amaranth, calendula and nasturtiums erupt from the pathways of the vegetable garden. Any design is lost beneath wildly reaching stalks, drooping flowers, bursting seed heads, and harvesting begins to feel more like foraging. The chiffchaff and I hunt for caterpillars amongst the kale and I stoop to seek courgettes under huge dripping leaves. I discover our first broad beans, a foot long and quietly pretending to be stems and stakes. And we break the warm soil to harvest our first potatoes, little rosy things that could’ve done with some more time under the earth. But garden firsts are addictive, a marvel. We also snipped the first leaves of cavalo nero, and, a crowning first for July, two artichokes; cut, steamed, drowned in dressing and enjoyed with riesling. The conical choke came away clean in my fingers, leaving three mouthfuls of metallic earth and disquieting sweetness, the elevated essence of soil.
*My shoulders, not his. Humphrey is my short-legged, wire-haired, co-adventurer.