#countryside

When does the year begin? Well: that rather depends: on who you are, and where. The Church kalendar – like the academic, which is hewn of the ecclesiastical – begins after the harvest-tide, with Advent, a time of preparation, light kindling and shining forth even as darkness gathers. The countryman’s calendar is governed by the rhythms of the earth, of sowing and of harvest. The angler’s year, the shooting man’s, the hunter’s, all these are in the disposition of God – or Nature, if you fancy yourself allergic to God – even as is the countryman’s. ↗

— G.M.W. Wemyss

#countryside #time #nature

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#countryside #does #dreadful #london #lowest

I like girls who like the countryside, put on walking boots and can bend with the wind a bit. If you're going to live with me, you need to be able to embrace the countryside and wet dogs. ↗

— Jay Kay

#bend #bit #boots #countryside #dogs

As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale. ↗

— Lily Collins

#countryside #creating #english #english countryside #fairy

I'm in this absolutely gorgeous manor house with acres of quite beautiful countryside. I've got trout in the river, an organic vegetable garden, I've got my work 40 yards from my home. I don't mind being criticised, but where are they criticising from? Which hut are they criticising me from, exactly? ↗

— Jay Kay

#acres #beautiful #being #countryside #criticised

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#destruction #english #english countryside #genuine #growth

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand. ↗

— Mary Wesley

#aspects #being #challenge #continue #countryside

At all times and in all places, in season and out of season, time is now and England, place is now and England; past and present inter-penetrate. The best days an angler spends upon his river – the river which is Heraclitus’ river, which is never the same as the angler is never the same, yet is the same always – are those he recollects in tranquillity, as wintry weather lashes the land without, and he, snug and warm, ties new patterns of dry-fly, and remembers the leaf-dapple upon clear water and the play of light and the eternal dance of ranunculus in the chalk-stream. A cricket match between two riotously inexpert village Second XIs is no less an instance of timeless, of time caught in ritual within an emerald Arcadia, than is a Test at Lord’s, and we who love the greatest of games know that we do indeed catch a fleeting glimpse of a spectral twelfth man on every pitch, for in each re-enactment of the mystery there is the cumulation of all that has gone before and shall come after. Et ego in Arcadia. ↗

— G.M.W. Wemyss

#arcadia #country-life #countryside #cricket #flyfishing

How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun. In the summer, there is an assortment of honeys to be sucked from bindweed flowers, held fragile and fragrant to hungry lips, and the tiny funnels of honeysuckle and clover blossoms to taste. ↗

— Miss Read

#children #country #countryside #nature #plants

Arcady, like Death its denizen with us, is all around us, if we – stalled beasts who want to be set forth – but see it. Forth, then, with Dan Geoffrey upon the heye wey: Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal! Know thy contree, look up, thank God of all; Hold the heye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede; And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede. ↗

— G.M.W. Wemyss

#countryside #death