The sun is rising, and so am I, and the day looks too good to waste. In Herefordshire there are at least seventeen words for green, over and above mere shades. There is long grass, mown grass, new yew, cut yew, pondweed and its leprous cousin blanketweed, moss, clubmoss, hound's tongue, hart's tongue, polypody and all the other ferns with no name that grow in that wall with no mortar. There is fresh early summer, and leathery late summer. There are envy, nausea, inexperience and hope. And there is the frog motivating across the flagstones towards the pond, and the emerald on the gnarled hand of the Duchess as she digs out a dock in the glaucous shade of the Himalayan whitebeam. Though of course the Duchess will not be up for some time yet.
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