Country diary 1926: How good the damp earth smells

NEW FOREST: After the long dry spell how good the damp earth smells. The wood was the place to enjoy it. It is still very green. The colours are slow in coming this year. Even now there is more colour on the ground than in the trees. The fern has run through gold and copper to rusty red. Here and there a bramble flames, and bilberry patches are shot with crimson. The green tracks were spotted with fungi, white and yellow, brown and purply red. And pale yellow tormentil trailed across the grass. The white beam has lost its berries, which hung in scarlet bunches a week ago. All that are left hang by ones or twos or are scattered on the ground.

Under the Spanish chestnuts the prickly balls lay open, star-shaped, showing their white lining with the shiny nuts up-standing in their places or spilt upon the ground. It was very still in the wood – outside noises were cut off; one’s steps made no sound on the sodden leaves and grass. Once I heard the gurgling of a little watercourse that had long been dry. Twice from the tree-tops came the sudden clatter of a wood pigeon getting under weigh; and that was all.