Could Covid-19 help us reconnect with what is really important in life?

Hemispheres of pale lemon primrose, made vigorous by the wet spring ground. Snowdrops have now finished their display and wait in thick bunches of lush leaves to to be lifted and divided for transplanting into other parts of the Woodland Garden. Division invigorates the plants as well as allowing us to spread the snowdrops more widely across the garden.

The absence of vehicle noise (the result of the Covid-19 'lockdown') has not been experienced in my lifetime. It brings an even greater sense of calm to the wellbeing we always enjoy outside. 

Spring primrose

A resplendent cock pheasant whup-whup-whups before being angered by his own reflection and thundering with his bill on the outside of the bedroom windows. Window after window. A male great tit, similarly testosterone-charged, flutters up and down the windows chasing himself - anti-defenestration?

Female orange tip, butter-yellow brimstone, peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies have emerged into the fresh spring sunshine. An early summer migrant chiffchaff tick-tocks, while remaining winter migrant bramblings peck with resident chaffinch cousins beneath the busy feeders. This is the period termed 'the hungry gap' when winter food supplies have been exhausted and before spring food arrives. It is important to maintain the supplementary feeding so that birds can enter the breeding season in good condition.

Two soprano pipistrelle bats on translucent wings at dusk above my head. The nervous muntjac rarely strays from the brambles and cover afforded by the Cedar Walk. Badgers continue to send an expeditionary force into the garden. No signs of hedgehogs. I watch a tree bumblebee nosing into a crack in the standing trunk of a rotting birch.

I have mowed the lawn on the mowers highest setting: the 'lawn' is spongy with moss and the thatch of dead grass from last year. Not really a 'lawn' at all these days. Creeping buttercup continues its accretion. This year, there will be shorter areas of grass for toddler playing but the majority of the grass will be left unmown for invertebrates to take sanctuary in the moss, dead grass and increasing diversity of 'weeds' (native wildflowers).

Compost has been turned and is rising in temperature as the mix of weeds, kitchen waste, cardboard, paper and grass melds together. On its third day, the temperature has risen 20C to 30C. Destination 70C to kill soil pathogens, perennial weeds and seeds. The well-rotted compost from last year has been spread on the no-dig vegetable beds where it remains as a mulch. Overwintering onions, shallots, garlic and broad beans have benefitted from the wet and mild spring. Carrots, parsnips and radish have been sown. Seedling beetroot and peas for pea shoots planted. Today we planted a Victorian pea 'Ambassador' that gives plants that can grow six feet tall. It is no longer commercial, but is a wonderful choice for the gardener. Our purple sprouting broccoli resemble forest trees - and are yielding well. This is the traditional, seasonal broccoli of old. Organically grown, each floret is higher in flavonoids, has no chemicals and of course, no food miles or plastic used in its' production. There is evidence too, that the encouragement of mycorrhizal in the no-dig system benefits not only the plants but the eater too. Supermarket broccoli is Calabrese, - still delicious when fresh but much less tasty. Today, red-legged partridge were inspecting Vegetable Garden growth.

The quarantine has given me the chance to work on my sourdough  bread. This is a traditional bread made with natural yeasts. Nottinghamshire's Pilgrim Fathers took sourdough with them on the Mayflower 400 years ago to make bread in the New World. I will write about sourdoughs in a future post. My, how those days fly by in the Carlyle household.

Our four hens are laying prodigiously. Well, true to say that three of them are. Moussa lays distinctive blue/green eggs - but not many of them. One egg a fortnight is her going at full throttle these days.  If truth is told, in other regimes she would be renamed Soup.  I've told her this in heart-to-heart conversations but with no result. Suffice to say that I won't be rebranding myself as an inspirational speaker for recalcitrant layers when this whole coronavirus mess ends.

We slog through the heavy clay of the prairie beds, clearing the dead vegetation of last year and crunching it up and casting it back onto the ground as an insect and spider adventure playground. Long ropes of couch grass are teased out of the sticky soil. 

Frogspawn turns to tadpoles. Hungry great diving beetles break the pond surface tension like miniature blue whales, waiting for the 'taddies' to wriggle from their jelly protection and move into the open water. There are patches of iridescent dust on the surface of the pond left from the feathers of bathing wood pigeons and stock doves. Our native daffodils flower in their first year around the pond with a promise of great abundance in following years. A pair of mallards has adopted us. They clatter into the evening sky when I least expect them during my night time torch walks. Once again, invasive aquatic parrot feather slowly, silently, asserts itself in the pond. Unchecked, it will choke it.

Much of modern life is impoverished and de-skilled in what we know in our hearts are the essentials. We eat poor quality food whose production methods and provenance are a mystery. We get insufficient exercise and when we do exercise, it is expending energy getting nowhere in personal best times. And while we are transfixed by our screens we have too little contact with the natural world. Our lives are characterised by stress.

This is true now, more than ever. In these anxious, uncertain times, perhaps the enforced quarantine will enable us to reflect on what 21st century life has become...

Could Covid-19 help us reconnect with what is really important in life?