Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and just above our village there's a wildflower meadow.
It's owned by somebody in the village and each year I walk past it on the public footpath that runs up to Dartmoor and see it shifting and changing over the seasons.
At the moment the grass is very long and it's sort of bent over.
We've had a bit of rain recently and I know that soon they'll bring in some cattle to graze it and they've got a wonderful gentle way of being with the land here and just allowing allowing the land to regenerate.
It's just a it's a wonderful thing to witness.
There's a gentleness in this patch of land.
There's a real sense that it's it's being allowed to breathe and I was helping out yesterday in we've got a very small wildflower meadow.
It's probably a third of an acre so it's quite a small patch.
It's the old cemetery and it's not used as a cemetery anymore and we as a village are creating a wildflower meadow there so it's a very natural wildflower meadow.
Lots and lots of grasses and the occasional native flower and we've seen lots of butterflies this year.
It's been a brilliant year for butterflies and there's something really special about that little patch.
Now that's the patch I get involved with and support in maintaining and yesterday the lady that runs the project was out scything.
So rather than get cattle to graze the land she was scything the land and she put out a little shout saying if anybody wants to come down and have a go with the scythe then it'd be lovely to see you.
So I thought I'd love that.
So I wandered down to the wildflower meadow at the cemetery and her husband was there working and she was working and I stopped for chat and then she said do you want to go and I had a go and it was obviously quite hard to get the technique and I did a bit of a bodge job but it was you know it was okay I was getting the rhythm of it eventually and as we were as I was doing that she was chatting and we're talking about family and asking after her children and her parents and she was doing the same for me and gently the grass was falling and it was you know not not a very fast progress at all and I was only there for probably about half an hour but there was something that was so enriching in that experience like the wildflower meadow we are managing it and it's it's there to really encourage animals but one of the symptoms or side effects that I'm noticing is that it's bringing the village together it's bringing us together in a slightly different ways one is that I went and had this gentle conversation doing a bit of physical activity with someone in the village who I wouldn't probably have seen had I not been down at the meadow and I love that I love the simplicity of the scything the conversation the connection and the gentleness of that there's no rush and there was no speed it wasn't like we need to get the grass cut let's get in the mower it was let's cut the grass gently and that process encouraged conversation and connection in its own right so today's reflection is really all about relishing the the slowness and what it can bring the slowness of cutting a meadow with a scythe can bring connection and conversation the slowness of walking rather than jumping in your car to go on a trip can mean that you can smile at people as you go by and potentially have conversations with them the slowness of not pressing by when you see something on the internet that you want and just considering is there a shop I could go and get this in and actually connect with a shopkeeper that's what I'm encouraging today is recognizing that there is beauty and simplicity and slowness it can be such an enriching experience an experience of connection so speed is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to connecting with others with yourself and with the land
