Suddenly dragonflies, but only memories of mosquitos

This late season; July and the elders are flowering, the apple June drops litter the lawn and, for the first time, this week, dragonflies. The dragons fly carefully, colours still pastel, exoskeletons still soft. The dazzling, swift insectivores of summer still infants.

The lawn, an underbrush of soft green blades, a fluffy top of hawkweed yellow and plantain, got trimmed yesterday. Potted plants that cower in the shade of apple trees moved out and back; wooden frameworks did the same dance, but rolled rather than slid their journeys.

The summer's bills have arrived. Insurances, MOTs, the winter's fuel. Children move-on steps (only small ones), all relaxed into more teenageness. Holiday plans form.

Small birds have fledged and seek independence. Foals still lounge in shade when they can get away with it, but are learning to like the grass. Three donkeys in the village don't appear to have foals this year. In the early morning a month back I mistook them for a pile of grey rubbish sacks stacked in the gutter; their ears up like tied bag tops while they rested their legs in communal half-slumber.

The white clematis growing almost through the peanut feeder has given some rarer visitors heart. Last Friday a low stock of nuts brought an uneasy truce between a mouse and sparrow. Both nibbled their own side of the stack carefully. I disturbed a woodpecker on the Sunday morning. He flew to the apple trees leaving the feeder swinging wildly in his wake.

I walked the tracks of Ocknell Plain, stalking deer, bending to sniff the browsed thyme, photographing the common spotted orchid. Over towards the old cloverleaves, where 70 years ago Merlins hummed and fired, I looked for my campsite - in my mind it was yesterday and the peg holes should still have been sharp and the grass yellowed in a rectangle, but in reality, 29 years have passed. I couldn't find the spot, now probably scrubbed over. What's left of the runway doesn't look so impervious to tent pegs as I remember; more monuments have softened, collapsed - dug out by fox and rabbit, their camouflage complete.