South Downs Way - the earth laughs in flowers

'The Earth laughs in flowers,' Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes we wonder how we might communicate with aliens should they visit our lonely planet.

Maybe a more interesting question is whether there are already 'aliens' here with whom we have failed to establish contact 

I have been enjoying the flowers of the South Downs Way. 

Meadow saxifrage, lime green crosswort, eyebright, common spotted orchid and silverweed are all in bloom on the downs. To me they are an exquisite tapestry of yellow, blue and pink. 

But seen from another viewpoint, flowers are the genitals of plants, lewdly displayed in order to achieve fertilisation.

Bees and butterflies get excited, just as the flowering plants intend, but for them, the glowing shapes of flowers mean food, not sex. They are enthusiastic but unwitting partners in plants' reproduction.

As for me, as this deadly serious battle for reproduction and nourishment takes place right under my nose, I cry 'Oh, how pretty!'

But I am missing so many layers of communication.

Enhanced Reality

 Pascoe showed me a phone app which gave an enhanced reality view of the world - extra information about whatever he pointed his phone at.

But I’ve been finding that taking an interest in wildlife has the effect of enhancing my reality.
The other day we walked along the Northumberland coast near Low Newton.

The dunes were more colourful than the Chelsea flower show with bloody cranesbill, burnet rose and cinquefoil.

An area of beach had been cordoned off for ground nesting birds. At first it looked to us empty, the sand broken only by hummocks of maram grass. Yet as we watched, something moved.  Finally, we made out a family of ringed plovers, the parents with their natty, black-banded plumage, the chicks brownish and fluffy yet agile, able to run and hide.
Beneath Dunstanburgh castle, a parabolic cliff magnified the onomatopoeiac cries of the kittiwakes and the cackles of the fulmars nesting there, while a raft of razor bills looked on from the water beneath
Later on, I played the RSPB app birdcalls on my phone and duetted with firstly a sedge warbler and then a reed bunting.

And last of all, the thing that set the crown on the afternoon. Nearly back at the car park, I cast a casual eye over a brackish pond and saw an avocet with its immaculate black and white plumage and its unique upturned bill.  Once nearly extinct in the UK, this was a special sighting.

Really nothing at all had happened to us that day on our eight mile hike, but the wildlife made me feel as if it had been an incredibly eventful day.

A Mother's Day Service

At church, Mother’s day is called Mothering Sunday and is said to be the day when people would traditionally revisit their mother church – the one where they were baptised.

But I have always held this to be an evil rumour put about by clergymen who have forgotten to buy their mothers a card.

Mother’s Day is about ME.

Obviously.

So although I’m a regular churchgoer at St Luke’s, I usually eschew Mothering Sunday Services and force my benighted children to accompany me on a day trip into the countryside.

However, due to current guidelines, I couldn’t gather my offspring this year.  We phoned Nigel’s Mum in Northumberland, mine in Cornwall.  My kids Skyped and Zoomed in.

However, the thing that really made it feel like Mother’s Day was, paradoxically, church.

The church Mother’s Day service was not held this year owing to Covid 19.  In the Vicar’s garden paraded a legion of brightly-coloured pots of polyanthus. They had been purchased to hand out on Mother’s Day, but were now unclaimed.

A few of us who could not think up an excuse quickly enough were delegated to place these on the doorsteps of the women who should have received them.

Initially, the freezing East wind and the fact that my recipients were dotted all over town made me curse.  But then I got into it. 

I began to feel a bit like the Easter Bunny come early.

And in the end, one of the nicest things about my Mother’s Day was the thought of those other mothers opening their doors to an unexpected splash of colourful flowers.