‘Clear mild day with water-colour blue skies. Past last row of identical stone houses, road becomes muddy track with standing puddles of water. Walking into sun, low horizontal light shining on grass, [the river,] meadows of stiff dried beige sedge rustling in little breeze. Trough creaking wooden stile. Squint into sun; brilliant green grass meadows stretching flat away on both sides of the river, colour iridescent, floating almost in a green radiance above the grass itself. Sky reflecting pale watery blues in flooded fields, crooked runnels and ponds. Rural quiet scene. No people. Ahead, path gleaming silver in the light, green meadows blazing, framed between dark willows; cows coming, like dark silhouettes against the sun –bright grasslands, grazing, placid bulks, tails twined and clotted with mud. Red hawthorn berries vivid on the tall bushes bordering the mud-quaged path. Eerie moss-green, unearthly neon green trunk of slender elderberry tree. Tiny English robin, olive-green back, big liquid dark eye, orange bib. Old man straight as a poker biking with white toy terrier beside him, trotting through the mud puddles. Very still air. Sound of hounds barking in the distance. Gazing back toward [the city], minute spires […] white in the sun over the bare treetops, pinnacles of frosting. Clear air, gentle landscape.’
(Sylvia Plath: Diaries)