Days shorten, shadows lengthen as the hot summer take its toll

The vibrant colours and freshness of spring and early summer are now distinctly subdued as our gardens, parklands and wild areas adopt a more tired and dusty appearance. It is almost as if nature is preparing for the onset of autumn by calming its rapid growth and asking every kind of wild life to slow down and accept the fact that the flourishing, colourful growth of another year has now passed its peak.

Other factors also serve to remind us that summer is passing away. One is the lack of birdsong. Whereas the air was full of their music only weeks ago, now there is a distinct silence. The need for birds to proclaim their presence is mainly over - birds use their songs to inform others of the boundaries of their territories and to notify competitors that they are nesting, that they have found their mate and that they intend producing a family within that territory. Now, most of that frantic activity has finished although we may find some late nesters and a few songsters.

Probably the most visible evidence of the maturing year is the shortening of the days. As the end of the month approaches, the sun sets about half an hour earlier than it did at the beginning of July. Similarly, dawn is now arriving later, also by around half an hour - it means we have lost about an hour per day during July.

July is often the hottest and driest month of the year in all parts of the country, with perhaps an exception along the western coastline and parts of the south-west. As I pen these notes, a lack of rain has created concern about possible drought conditions especially in the south of England, and also in parts of Europe. Portugal in particular is suffering from a severe lack of water as farm animals find themselves without anything to eat on parched pastures, in addition to which there is very little to drink. France and Italy are also experiencing similar problems.

Even if temperatures in this region rose above the eighties (26-28 degrees Celsius or so) around the middle of the month, this is by no means our hottest July. Past research has shown that the hottest days are usually between July 12 and 15 - as occurred this year - but in 1881, July 15 recorded a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit at Alton in Hampshire. Generally, however, it appears that the average temperature during the month is around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius) which some believe is ideal.

Early in the year, a corner of our garden is beautified by the appearance of a huge clump of forget-me-nots. Their charming light-blue flowers add a welcome touch of colour and so we leave them to their own devices until they are obviously in decline, then we clear away the debris. Why our flowers bloom at that early stage of the year is not certain because in some areas, they are in glorious evidence much later, sometimes well into the autumn. Even though we welcome forget-me-nots to our garden, they are found in the wild, growing in rich profusion rather like weeds.

Inevitably, the curious name of these small, pretty blue flowers with yellow eyes produces the question - why are they called forget-me-nots? They have other names, such as bird's eye, robin's eye and even snake grass, but their very first name was myosotis. This means mouse-ear and it was given to the flowers by the Swiss expert, Konrad Genser.

Myosotis was the name given to all the varieties of this flower and for many years they bore no other name. Then in the sixteenth century, the herbalist, John Gerard, decided that myosotis plants, having coiled stems which unfurled as they matured, looked rather like scorpions and so he named them scorpion grasses. The different varieties were known as myosotis arvensis, mosotis laxa, myosotis sylvatica and myosotis discolor. These are respectively the common, tufted, wood and yellow-and-blue varieties.

It was some three centuries later in 1802 when the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge entered the story. He had discovered a German folk story which he used as the basis for one of his works. It told how a German knight and his lady were enjoying time together on the banks of a river when they came across a clump of these charming little blue flowers with yellow eyes. Anxious to declare his love in a romantic way, the knight bent down to pick some for his lady friend, but the weight of his armour was such that he over-balanced and fell into the deep water.

There was no way he could climb out and she was unable to help, and so he disappeared beneath the surface, heading for certain death. As he sank, he cried out, "Vergisz mein nicht." That is German for forget-me-not.

In Germany, the plant became known by that name, and the legend spread across Europe until the little blue flower became the symbol of true love. In France, for example, it became known as "ne m'oubliez pas" which means "do not forget me" but it was also given another name, "aimez-moi" which means "love me". It was given that name because sweethearts would wear these flowers as signs of everlasting love.

That story did not reach England until Coleridge decided to use it as the basis for a poem. He titled his work The Keepsake in which he used the sad story of the drowned knight and wrote about "That blue and bright-eyed flowerlet of the brook; hope's gentle gem, the sweet forget-me-not." From that time, it was known by this name in England, with Coleridge commenting that the flower had this name throughout Germany and other parts of Europe, including Sweden and Denmark. I believe the French still refer to it as "ne m'oubliez pas."

The herbal values of forget-me-nots have largely been forgotten, but the plants were used for making a syrup which was a cure for lung complaints, and as the source of an extract which was produced to ease coughs.

A man in a local pub was telling one of his rather tall stories when a pal tried to poke fun at his yarn by saying, "Hadaway, man, that's a load o' rubbish." The term seems to be used to express some disbelief or incredulity; it might even be used instead of "Go on with you" or "Get away!" I think the term is, or perhaps was, abbreviated to "Ha-way" which might be written as "How-way", and it seems to be used in this region rather than the whole of England.

"How-way man" is a familiar term in the North-East, especially around Durham and Newcastle rather than the Yorkshire Dales or North York Moors, while "How-way" without the suffix of "man" is still widely used in the latter areas. It is often used when someone means "come on" or "hurry up", and all these terms, or variations of them, continue to feature in our local speech.

"Hadaway" is more of a puzzle. None of my standard or dialect dictionaries, including one from the Lake District, contains the word but it does appear in a universal dictionary which contains interesting words from around the globe. In this case it is defined as a north-eastern English word which might be derived from two words, ie hold and away, in other words keep off or get away!

To add to the puzzle, a former colleague bore the surname Hadaway. I have never come across it in any other family, and it is not contained in my various books about sources of family names nor can I find it in any atlas as a place-name. It is not even in my atlas which includes town and village names from around the world.

Continuing the topic of dialects, I heard a man refer recently to a greenfinch and he called it a green linny. Not surprisingly, the linnet (a cousin of the greenfinch) is also called a linny, albeit a brown one, while the goldfinch is a gowd (gold) linny. A red linny is a redpoll, also a cousin of the finches, while another cousin, the brambling, a winter visitor from Scandinavia, is known as a French linny.

That leaves chaffinches, bullfinches, twites, siskins, crossbills, bullfinches and hawfinches but I have never heard the linny name used for them - but linny is also a local dialect reference to linen and lime trees!