This morning I walked the woods nearby. The flowers are nearly all done. Along the winding path are mushrooms, guelder rose berries the colour of rubies, fading steeples of rosebay willowherb, dangling blackberries, and ferns rising in lush ramparts. Deer haunt this timbered land; walking off-piste, a friend once found an antler. Someone has stuck tiny fairy doors and paper butterflies on the trees, which look tacky. Nature is its own wonder.

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