in a meadow

It's the time for meadow foxtail and other early grasses: sweet vernal grass, soft brome. The meadow trembles between death and life - the stony relics of winter, the first few bubbles in the pan. The eye is still starved, but only while it's diving.

Meadow foxtail is a beautiful grass and livestock love to graze it. It becomes linked in the mind with meadow buttercup, its invariable comrade. The flower-heads are very variable, like fat fuzzy bees. When the anthers appear (Alopecurus is protogynous, the stigmas are exserted first) they can be any colour from purple to a dazzling lemon yellow.