The re-opening of garden centres after a period of lockdown has been a huge relief for those of us who love gardening and find it immensely therapeutic.
I’m sure that this period will have encouraged many of us to grow more of our own food. The queues at supermarkets have reminded us that we cannot always have exactly what we want to eat – whether it’s from the other side of the world or out of the natural seasonal cycle. I’m sure that many of us, like me, feel slightly less secure in our food supply than we did before lockdown.
So if you’re lucky enough to have a garden this may have prompted you to start growing food of your own, from lettuces to fruit trees. If you don’t have a garden you might like to take on an allotment. It’s a very companionable occupation as allotmenteers are a friendly bunch.
Even if you don’t have a garden it’s been wonderful to be able to observe wildlife attracted by flowering plants in our parks and even the in the spaces where the council has not mown the grass, allowing buttercups and speedwell to turn the roundabouts a sunny gold and blue. Bees tumbling in the pollen of the blooms of poppies, bats hunting insects we can barely see, and blue tits feeding their young – this period is giving us time to immerse ourselves in nature. The reduction of traffic noise means that we can now hear the dawn chorus of blackbirds, robins and the cooing of pigeons – this at least I hope will last!