As fresh as a daisy

As he sets out to look for wandering sheep on a bright April morning, the sight of abundant sticky cleavers, golden dandelions and a galaxy of daisies transports John Lewis-Stempel back to the country games of his childhood

- John Lewis-Stempel

The shepherd on his pasture walks 
The first fair cowslip finds, 
Whose tufted flowers, on slender stalks, 
Keep nodding to the winds. 
And though the thorns withhold the May, 
Their shades the violets bring, 
Which children stoop for in their play 
As tokens of the Spring. 
‘April’, from the ‘The Shepherd’s 
Calendar’ by John Clare

AN emerald wave-splash of cleavers up the hedge. When hurrying along the lane yesterday, I grabbed a handful of the cleavers’ Velcro-y tendrils, balled them up and threw them hazily over the gate to the waiting donkey. She has a taste for them. I misjudged the afternoon’s sailing sweet breeze slightly, she moved slightly and the bunched cleavers landed on top of her head, to sit like a green bird’s nest. She was not amused. I’m not one for diminishing the dignity of animals, but I confess to the difficulty of keeping a straight face at her comic headwear. As I leaned over the gate to restore her normal nobility, I was overtaken by one of those floods of memory of such vivid intensity that the effect is a physical arrestation. I was seven again, walking with my grandmother along the lane at Withington, and I dawdled behind to attach a strand of cleavers onto the back of her gabardine mac. A childish prank, known to generations of country kids; Galium aparine ‘cleaves’ to clothing and hair, hence the plant’s folk names ‘sticky billy,’ ‘gentleman’s tormentor’ and ‘sticky back’.