Summer Heavy with Fruit

Is August high summer, late summer, or early autumn? Does the Queen own our little cygnet that went missing? Who looks after the canal banks? This week’s episode addresses all these pressing questions, as well as dealing with my existential angst at the threat of being robbed of ‘summer’. 

Journal entry:

“19th August, Thursday

This week, each day fills and swells with the stresses and anxieties of work. Familiar pulses of panic surge up as the seconds tick by. 
 They overwhelm my skies. It feels as it’s all my world can contain, and even then, it’s not enough.

But then, I have also seen damson fruit ripen, and turn all the colours of a tropical sunset, and hang midnight blue and misty on the tree.
 And, for that, I am glad.”        

Episode Information

 In this episode I read ‘Night Crawls On’ by Tom Hennen which can be found in his (2013) Darkness Sticks to Everything. Washington: Copper Canyon Press. 

I also read an extract from the early 17th century English printed volume by Nicholas Breton of the 15th century The Kalendar of Shepherds: Being devices for the twelve months.

You can read a digitised reproduction of this book, with its wonderful woodcut engravings, in the Welcome Library: The Kalendar of Shepherds: Being devices for the twelve months.

This episode concludes with an extract from Wendell Berries’ ‘Sabbath Poems’ part XII, ‘I walk in openings’, from his (2018) The Peace of Wild Things and Other Poems published by Penguin.  

 General Details

In the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org.

Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano interludes composed and performed