Recording Hedges - and a Flare-up

Bad night - up in the early hours of Wednesday taking anti-inflammatories and pain killers - left leg.

However, it was not as bad as the one I had in December, thank God. And I was able to get to the Kingdom Hall on Thursday night to do my part in the School.

It was a new experience for me, as my poor partner had come down with a bad cold and was appearing in Pixel form from home. So I had to go into the back room, where a young brother brought me a device on which she and I appeared together when our moment came.  Amazing!

Though the thought of what I must look like appearing on the harshly lit enormous screen in the main body of the Hall... well, it does make me wish for a best seller, so I could afford to hire Kate Moss to appear as me on these Pixel occasions.

I have the programme for the Biological Recorders' Seminar we went to at the weekend beside me, as I have been thinking about the talk on hedgerows: The Great British Hedgerow and Dormouse Survey, by Sarah Barnsley and Ian White.

They stressed how important hedgerow is for so many little creatures, but also pointed out how important it is that they are properly cared for.   And this was the point that I took away from it.  To work for all their little creatures, the hedgerows need to be gardened.  And to just the right amount.

Too little care and they revert to a line of trees, and that dense thicket is lost.  Too much care - if say they are pruned too often - then the flowers and berries, which are an important food source, are lost.

Of course this took me right back to the Garden of Eden, when God told our first parents to care for the earth - to turn the whole earth into a paradise.

The earth needs to be gardened by us - not ruthlessly and exploited and ruined, but gardened. We should be working in perfect harmony with the natural laws, and caring so tenderly for all of it. And it will be so satisfying when we can.  It can make us happy even now, in these "difficult times, hard to deal with".

I guess what we need is the perfect balance between wild and gardened, formal and informal.  Which of course the Kingdom of God will achieve.  And how lovely will it be then?  It can be lovely enough now as I hope the photos above, from the camera of Captain Moth-Butterfly, demonstrate. They are from a trip we had to Nymans Gardens (local) plus an anonymous bit of hedgerow, possibly from Cornwall.