Very few days arrive and leave in quite such good odour as this one. A perfect temperature of around 26 degrees, a light breeze…and this afternoon, the most amazing Cirrus cloud display I’ve ever seen. The wisps stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon, like gigantic Old Man’s Beard plants. It was a day for being in the garden – from 10 am to 7 pm, with one break for strawberries at four in the afternoon. I am knackered, but in a pleasantly innocent way that promises a good night’s sleep. There is nothing quite like physical labour for making one rather too sanctimonious.
The strawberries were the first of the Gariguettes crop…to my mind, the finest strawbs in the world. But they were far from being the only new arrivals. Today I saw my first Swallowtail butterfly of 2014….a lovely specimen doing that float-and-swoop thing that only they have perfected. Every time I see the action involved in this, I think how marvellous it would be if flying by commercial airliner was like that: it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, but to choose a wind direction, jump on it and glide up and down would be infinitely preferable to sitting in a metal tube while being fed explanations for the delay. Swallowtails are, without doubt, the Beachboys of the airborne insect world – up to but not including the harmonies.
Today also brought my first encounter this year with a brown, horny-backed toad. Of course, the minute they’re picked up, the little buggers piss on you (whether this is out of fear or revenge I’ve no idea) but it’s worth it because they have a rough beauty that frogs somehow can’t match. They also croak at night in a manner that – perhaps more than anything for me – says Summer is, at last, genuinely on the way.
One species making its way happily around my land this morning was the rabbit. I saw three of them doing their sniff and investigate hoppity thing just after dawn. All of them looked alert and healthy – something of a rarity in recent years, as once again the rabbit population down here has been devastated by a new strain of myxomatosis. Wonderful Homo sapiens introduced the disease into Europe in the 1950s, since when rabbits have been developing resistance at a slightly faster rate than this scourge keeps mutating to kill more of them.
I understand why farmers dislike bunnies – they’ve nicked dozens of my lettuces over the years too (the rabbits, not the farmers) – but death from myxomatosis is up there with The Black Death for sheer obscenity. Once you’ve seen a rabbit with bulging eyes and wobbly docility wandering about aimlessly, you will never think about culling them in the same way again: shooting these vermin is infinitely more merciful. Also they taste better that way.
And the final new arrival in our commune is…..the Mayor. A lady, no less…and something of an energetic reformer, I’m led to understand. About time too: after 23 years of the last incarnation (he’s retiring at last at the age of 82) the need for a new broom is to say the least of it pressing. One thing I’ll be lobbying her about (once the builders and their trucks have departed) is the renewal of the chemin rural that leads to my residence. During the last ten years of his tenure, the previous incumbent managed somehow to build himself a spanking new Mairie, but not to resurface my little road. Politicians, eh? Plus ca change, et plus reste la meme.
As I write, the yellow Sun God that has been burning me gently all day is turning to a red blur behind what’s left of the cirrus haze . I never cease to be amazed at how long the day is, and yet how quickly the sun sets. I’ve seen it do this in places as far flung as Barbados, Queensland and Sharm El Sheik, but the one constant is how quickly the disappearance occurs, and how swiftly the balmy Spring warmth plunges into a frisson of chill on the skin.
Climate variety – and the enjoyment of it – has been replaced in recent years by an obsession with climate change. Equally, earnest campaigns to save wildlife have perhaps clouded just how tenacious all life on Earth is. Every year, I see gluts of this and unexplained absences of that. This can range from wild pyramid orchids via frogs to soft fruit and the grubs that invade it.
Each year we experience is an Armageddon for millions of species. Maybe it’s been too cold, or too wet, or too arid from November to March; but very little of this death and disaster is anything to do with Man. Man’s unwillingness to conserve is without question a genuine problem…particularly when it comes to water. However, long after we’ve disappeared from this planet, Earth will abide. Its adaptability far exceeds ours, and in the long run of survival, this is all that matters.
Tomorrow brings the start of another Human Working Week unrecognised by any other life-form here on Gaia. Whatever happens in the world of fractional reserve banking will be of sub-atomically infinitesimal importance in the Universe. One cannot live well by taking that view; but one can at least restore a sense of proportion by recognising the truth of it.
The Slog 