Country diary: The dandelions should be crowded; instead, a solitary bee | Paul Evans

The Marches, Shropshire: These glorious so-called weeds are everywhere at the moment, undimmed by the lack of attentionDandelion days. There is such wild energy in the air, the weather blows from hail, through showers, to bright sunshine, and dandelions pop up everywhere. There's old "piss-a-bed" with its fang-root biting into an abandoned cemetery memorial: the white marble one with pillars, wreaths and adoring wives.Anywhere dandelions grow they are local; antisocial Joneses there's no keeping up with. This rude intrusion into a display of fortune - dressed up as the pride and grief of three generations - flowers in the homeland of the great war poet from Oswestry, Wilfred Owen, who speaks from over the edge of the precipice we're all facing now and asks: "For this the clay grew tall?" Continue reading...