The wind is just strong enough to keep the butterflies off the buddleia and the thistle down from my field is blowing from west to east in bursts like snow.
The breeze is whisking away the construction noise from behind the cottage and all I can hear is the wind in the Elms and the faint contented sound of dog chewing.
Last thing you made?
Favorite savory treat?
Last thing you bought?
Favorite school memory?
Favorite exercise?
As I write, the main conclusions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is delivering the key conclusions from its forty two page report known as "Summary for Policy Makers".
None of what they have to say comes as a surprise. It is a tale of woe. A tale of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, of warming oceans, forest fires and desertification. Mankind has plundered and abused this beautiful planet and now we are reaching the painful reckoning.
More than ever, those who deny climate change seem like crazy fools - isolated in their ignorance. One of them even got to be America's 45th president. The report brings together hundreds of scientific studies and confirms what the rest of us suspected: climate change is real and human activity is responsible. There is no getting away from this truth.
Seen from outer space, this is just a little planet - a tiny blue and green marble gyrating in the endless blackness. You would think that the inhabitants of this small but miraculous orb could work together, be united in our husbandry but division, disparity and one-upmanship have conspired to work against our Earth. The "United Nations" is more of a dream than a reality and always has been since its inception.
The report fails to address the thorny issue of over-population which has surely accelerated the activities that contribute to global warming. It also fails to shame the richest countries that continue to turn a collective blind eye to the effects of their excessive appetites.
The signs were apparent a long, long time ago but now we have reached the eleventh hour. We cannot be optimistic that world leaders have the ability or the wherewithal to halt or even slow down climate change. There's still too much self-interest and they are probably just going through the motions of alarm for they inhabit the short term and then move on.
Here in Britain, the jobbing Conservative politician Alok Sharma will be chairing the twenty sixth United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) this autumn. In preparing for this critical conference, he has made over thirty return flights around the world during the time of coronavirus. Ironically, his carbon footprint must therefore be as big as Lemuel Gulliver's was in Lilliput. It's not a good sign.
Meanwhile our Little Phoebe, Charlotte Grace in New Zealand and all the other babies in the world will be wondering what kind of planet they are about to inherit from the current custodians. I apologise with all my heart.