I’ve been resisting writing about this because it seems both obvious and a bit naff, but does anyone else feel like they’ve been smacked round the face by nature since the lockdown began?
Is it because our pace of life has slowed down so dramatically? Or because we’re latching on to any glimmer of hope in such desperate times? Or maybe just because the resilience and persistence of nature somehow serves to remind us that all this horror will be over one day?
As a family we are outdoors a lot. We spend sunny days in the garden and go for a decent walk most weekends, yet at the moment I feel like I’m seeing the countryside through a completely different lens.
I’m the sort of idiot that inhales deeply when the muck spreader has been out on the fields, and when I hear a wood pigeon I have a visceral reaction - I will stop, look skyward, smile and say hi. I probably sound a tiny bit unstable, but I always think it means my grandparents are up there. (The call of wood pigeons was the defining sound of our stays with them during my childhood.)
But I can’t quite put my finger on why I’m seeing, hearing and smelling more this spring.
Why am I spotting tiny details I don’t remember seeing before? Is it really just the lack of traffic, rail and air noise that’s making the birds sound louder?
In the garden I’m watching plants and trees change every day. We have a gorgeous copper beech in the garden which goes through the most stunning spectrum of colours through the year - purple-red leaves in spring turn dark green then bronze into the autumn - before it finally losing all its leaves and starting over in late spring. It’s pretty mesmerising. Every year I think I should set up a time-lapse camera to capture it all happening, but then I remember that’s a bit of a headache and I really don’t have the kit, the know-how or the commitment.
But this past few weeks I’ve been spotting changes every day all over the place. Buds on the apple tree are starting to sprout tiny leaves. The cherry blossom - which every single year I think must surely be dead - has suddenly, today, sprouted hundreds of tiny dark pink buds, and will flower any time.
The magnolia, which was in glorious flower 10 days ago, is shedding its petals and we can see leaves peeking through in their place. The acer has gone from a sad little array of twigs to being covered in miniature leaves. The jasmine, which a month ago was doing nothing, has gone mad climbing the trellis, and the clematis, which I almost dug up last autumn assuming it was past help, has miraculously flowered for the first time ever.
Hell, even the new leaves on the brambles in the woods - lime green against the older dark leaves - caught my eye. What’s happening to me?!
Is it because I’m seeing so little that’s new - looking at the same four walls and the same four faces every day - so every change is jumping out at me? Am I appreciating the small things when everything else is so uncertain? Or am I simply more aware than ever of how absolutely insignificant we all are in the grand scheme?
The human race has become undeniably arrogant. We are so shocked that in Coronavirus we have come up against something we can’t easily defeat or control with weapons or money or threats.
People always seem to think they're above nature which is, I presume, why we collectively treat it so appallingly. Yet we are always a bit surprised and a touch cross when it trumps us with its hurricanes, floods, snowstorms and tsunamis.
On Day Five I posted about how while our whole lives had stopped, nature just carried on regardless. Bugs bumbling about, trees blooming, bulbs shooting, birds singing. They are wonderfully oblivious to all this. Maybe they’re having the last laugh. As we systematically destroy humanity with our carbon emissions, climate change, over-population and exhaustive harvesting, they are just biding their time until we’ve successfully wiped ourselves out, upon which they will have free reign to live in peace.
But for now I am enjoying the fact that spring in England is consistently and relentlessly positive. Our lockdown isolation combined with the anxiety-inducing headlines on top of missing our loved ones and worrying we’re going to succumb to the virus any day can become intolerably stressful.
But if you head into the garden, or out for your daily exercise, you can’t fail to be cheered.
And who doesn’t need a reason to be cheerful right now?
Commentaires