This is the time of year when Algy is able to watch beautiful Hebridean sunsets over the sea and islands from his own tree, and he recites to himself:

          This is the land the sunset washes,
          These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
          Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
          These are the western mystery!

          Night after night her purple traffic
          Strews the landing with opal bales;
          Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
          Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.

[Algy is reciting Emily Dickinson’s poem This is the land the sunset washes.]

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In the spring the sun sets in the north-west, over the Sea of the Hebrides and the Small Isles, so on fine evenings Algy loves to sit quietly in his tree and watch the glowing colours on the horizon.

The beautiful day was drawing to a close. Algy found a comfortable spot on some closely-cropped turf and lent back against a large clump of marram grass to catch the last of the afternoon sun. Although there weren’t any flowers in the grass just yet, and he certainly didn’t have a town to return to, the experiences of the day reminded him of the poem Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

          I will be the gladdest thing
             Under the sun!
          I will touch a hundred flowers
             And not pick one.

          I will look at cliffs and clouds
             With quiet eyes,
          Watch the wind bow down the grass,
             And the grass rise.

          And when lights begin to show
             Up from the town,
          I will mark which must be mine,
             And then start down!