Country diary: Masses of ivy that seem to defy time and space | Mark Cocker

Millers Dale, Derbyshire: Once I'd seen it, I could notice nothing else as it snaked up every tree and clambered across the groundThe light came late to a cloud-bound High Peak, and dawn didn't so much break as leak like water beneath a poorly sealed door. By the time there was enough day to take photos, I'd stopped at the year's first catkins on hazel. There, too, were speck-like red flowers at the tips of the buds, and momentarily I recall the small inward shout at finding the first signs of life in a new year.Yet how much more in error could I have been! Because this micro-scene involving hazel was framed within an immense mass of ivy. Ivy snaking up every tree in the wood, ivy shoaling as linear or vertical lawns over the tops of the walls and luxuriantly down the bridge parapet, ivy clambering across the ground, so that the whole south-facing slope was an impasto emerald sheet. It occurred to me thus, that, unlike a year, its stock of life doesn't begin or end; it persists. No wonder people used to take in ivy around this season as a symbol of such continuities. Continue reading...