Country diary: The rain has come, and suddenly the land looks (and smells) different | Nicola Chester

Inkpen, Berkshire: From lurid yellow to a moorland brown; from the scent of fire smoke to sheep urine. It’s amazing what some rainfall can doAfter an entire heat-baked summer without rain, the land looks strange and unlike itself. Fields, banks and grassy margins are the lurid yellow ochre of climate fiction – the mise en scène captured with eerie relevance in the recent BBC TV drama The Rapture.There are cracks so deep in Weaver’s Field that the farmer can push his arm in up to his elbow. Spots of bird’s-foot trefoil and sky-blue chicory (the latter on uncannily short stems) polka-dot the otherwise dead pasture. Sentinel field oaks seem unaffected, but shallow-rooted beech trees, familiar in giant caterpillar shapes on the downs, shed shrivelled brown leaves and a poor, early beechnut mast. Gnarly field maples are almost leafless, while sycamores bracket the green with their browning leaf-curl. Even in the keepered woods, laurel has wilted. Continue reading...