Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
Well,
I am walking up to our wildflower meadow.
It's the evening,
It's quite cool.
I'm on what's called the playing field,
Which is just a carpet of brownie yellow grass.
And the wildflower meadow itself,
I know for sure,
Because I was down here just a couple of days ago,
Has had a bit of a cut.
We were down with size.
Mowing it,
Taking down the long grasses,
Leaving all the flower heads.
So it means that animals and birds can still feast on the seeds as we move towards the autumn and the winter time.
But we were just replicating what happens in the wild,
Which is animals would eat the grass and take it away.
And what we wanted to do was to ensure that this wildflower meadow encourages more and more wildflowers each year.
And one of the things that was found,
Which was quite exciting,
Was a snake skin.
It was a grass snake and the skin was quite large.
I think they thought it was maybe about a four foot long snake.
But if a grass snake has been living in our meadow,
That means it would have been eating small mammals,
Voles,
Mice and insects.
And that means that our wildflower meadow has been doing its job which is about encouraging a diversity of creatures,
Whether it be insects,
Butterflies,
Mammals and reptiles and birds.
We were really delighted to find it.
But also the skin had a bit of symbolic meaning for me because when I walked my pilgrimage last year,
It was the year of the snake,
The Chinese year of the snake,
That is.
And one of the things I reflected on as I was walking,
Symbolically for me was this sense of how a snake sheds its skin.
So when it's on a growth spurt,
Unlike us with stretchy skin,
We grow into our skin,
A snake has to cast off an old skin and grow a new one from beneath.
So the new skin grows and the old skin splits and eventually gets shed.
And that felt very apt for me,
Particularly last year,
Because I was walking during the Chinese year of the snake.
I felt like I was on a journey of transition as I walked my pilgrimage across England.
And it just really resonated for me as a metaphor in my life.
And then seeing that skin,
The snake skin in the wildflower meadow the other day,
Just hit me.
It was like,
Ah,
It feels as though the transition is maybe really nearing completion,
I am moving into a different phase of life and I have shed my old skin and I'm stepping into a new Liz,
A new way of being in the world.
Not that it's going to be remarkably different,
I'm not going to change my character or personality,
But I feel as though something new is growing in me and wants to be expressed and I'm really looking forward to that.
So seeing the skin of the snake,
The snake skin,
Had a lot of symbolic meaning for me.
It just felt as though my life really is in a space of transition and I am moving into the next phase.
And I just wonder if I'm the only one feeling that,
Whether you feel you're in a place of transition,
Whether you feel you're moving into a different phase,
Whether you feel life is calling you to express yourself in a slightly different way.
And if it is,
What are you being asked to do,
To be,
To share,
To create in the world?
What sort of transition are you going through?
Let me know your reflections and of course don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
