Midsummer Madness.

There is more that one form of madness that comes to haunt us on those long summer evenings, as we talk the sun down out of the sky. Shoreham beach is the place for lunacy as day slips into night.

The shingle and sand stretched, curved and shaped the deep blue rippling sea into the bright blue, cold sky. The sun was sinking over the downs, as the plant spotters spotted, and where BHOGG could find no Bog. http://www.bhogg.org

PLANT SPOTTERS WITH VIEW

I have driven through the lunarscape of Djibouti, where only the French Foreign Legion control the land, walked with snow shoes across Arctic landscapes where the Saami survive, but neither are as inhospitable to plants as pebbles on pebbles on pebbles on Shoreham beach.

PEBBLES ON PEBBLES

Every organic gardener knows that the answer lies in the soil in building up its fertility to retain nutrients, create reservoirs of moisture and living bacteria to stimulate root growth.

PAYING RESPECTS

A clue that someone double dug the shingle and deposited some rotted manure by moon light under the pebbles . Perhaps there is the beginning of a murder mystery with bodies buried on the shore, hidden in a beach hut by day and… by night…, in the light of the waning moon, hidden six feet under.

BEACH HUTS

An odd smell, something fishy , lets look for clues in the shingle.

The more prosaically suggestion of seaweed and herring gull droppings, festering, fermenting, fertilising under our feet is not believable at the summer solstice. Whatever the nutrients the most extraordinary plants grow on the sea shore ranging from grasses and Opium Poppies to Sea Campion and Sea Kale, that sends its seeds to sail the seas, settling on some foreign shore.

VERBENUM

Red , white and Pink made their escape from their garden prisons.Verbena has long been associated with divine and other supernatural forces. It was called "tears of Isis" in Ancient Egypt, and later on "Juno's tears".

BITING STONE CROP ( SEDUM ACRE)

Sunrise at sunset, summer madness again.

OPIUM POPPY

Stoned but don’t tell the allotment police.

SEAKALE

The seeds float like green pearls in an oysterless sea to a wind swept shore.

SEA CAMPION

Lucid in the sky with diamonds,

where Pink Power rules OK.

SEE TREES ?

Standing stones pointing seawards to celebrate the solstice?

I left as the sun was setting at 9 pm and the cool northerly wind reminded me of the time. It could have been another magical hour if we had the good sense to keep the same time as our European neighbours across the Channel, where it is light until 10-30pm. Their dawn chorus of blackbirds wakes them with their song an hour later at 5 am.

What mid summer madness in Britain, but what mid summer bliss on our beaches.

For more madness see http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Shingle.htm