…From afar, in a forest vista, it seemed to be hilarious and dressy, sparkling with unbelievably even and clean yellowness. I came closer; it was an abandoned field, long unplowed and unsown, and now densely grown with some low bushy plants. They suddenly gave off a pleasant bitterish flowery scent. “Blimey, this is a wild rape,” I recalled once read botanical atlas, “some kind of weed...”

A fresh breeze ruffled the live carpet, and the entire field undulated with golden iridescent ripples that rolled forth to a sun-shaded forest mural forming a striking contrast of dark green and bright yellow. “Like a precious chalice in a malachite setting,” a simile flickered in my mind.
A kite soared in a scorching July sky. The heat presaged a thunderstorm. Over the west part of the horizon, there already was an ominously dark cloud swelling with rain. And only at the zenith, ragged and quickly shifting cloud edges were glittering with molten silver emitting unbearable light. The wind was picking up and the yellow rape clusters swung rapidly as if they had been performing some exotic dance.

Indiscernible for an eye, flocks of larks were clinking incessantly and passionately. Before the storm, it seemed that all the flowers, the forest and this whole field remote from human settlements chanted. Here fell the warm gray balls somewhere from high and flew close to the bushes of golden wild rape. Some of the larks just rushed over the field, sometimes flitting from flower to flower and filling the area with an unstoppable sawmill-like twitter. Others, briskly fluttering their little wings shot upwards and hovered above at around fifteen feet or so to extol life.

Pre-thunderstorm clouds piled up all around the sky, somewhere livid-purple, as if they had been heated from inside, and I saw that above the forest there was just a small blue window out of which in a magnificent broad cataract, the sun rays were thrusting down to the earth pouring with warm soft light over all the summer fragrant bloom. Yet, in the tense, filled with electricity air, a blizzard of aspen tufts raged inaudibly. Ultimately, a deafening clap of thunder exploded and first heavy raindrops loudly whipped the gold of the wild turnip flowers. At the very same time the torrents blustered, it felt for a moment that the whole nature gave out a sigh of relief, and all the trees, plants, birds, and animals rejoiced at this resplendent and agitated, woven of thick rain spurts pelting.

Soaked to the skin, alone, in the middle of a misty and suddenly mute field, I also silently enjoyed ravishing happiness of a man who only once or twice a year is given a chance to watch and feel this wonderful trepidation of nature.