A Midlands Landscape

A windfall apple is an apple that has fallen from a tree. When we gather windfalls, we help ourselves to apples that happen to have fallen.

In this exercise, we help ourselves to words that have arrived by chance, and use these to inspire our own creative endeavours.

How to use our ‘windfall words’ exercise

Here is a short extract from classic novel set in the Midlands. To begin, read it through.

The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty and to spread out coral fruit for the birds.

Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful.

These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to midland-bred souls—the things they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart standing between their father’s knees while he drove leisurely.
George Eliot – Middlemarch

Eliot’s Middlemarch is famous for its depictions of provincial life, just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning to change the English landscape.

We’ll use the text to generate our collection of windfall words. Can you write a short description of a landscape you remember – or one you might like to visit – which uses as many of these words as possible?