Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm walking down towards my village past what is a wildflower meadow.
It's just left to go wild and in the summer it's just glorious swaying haze of grasses and different flowers that come through and this time of year it's a bit flatter.
The grass has died down but mainly the grass has gone because there's a small herd of cows,
Maybe half a dozen cows,
That the owner of this wildflower meadow she brings in.
These are lucky cows because I think they go to all the wildflower meadows around and about so the grasses I think are particularly delicious and they go and graze the grasses and the the idea is that what they're doing is they're replicating what would happen in the wild.
So in the wild grasses would grow and then in plains or wide open spaces animals would come and graze the grass and the meadow would re-flower again or take growth again in the spring.
And you see what the cattle do,
They do a few things.
One is they rip up the grass because they're eating it so they take the grass away but also I can just see over the fence here they churn up the soil a bit and that's brilliant for seeds,
Wildflower seeds,
To take root again and also of course their manure feeds plants for next year.
I can just see them down in the field,
They're just chewing the cud at the moment.
They've got quite long horns,
These aren't the usual cows I see around up on Dartmoor,
They're magnificent beasts and they're just enjoying the sunshine today.
And I guess it really got me thinking because these cattle will be taken off this field soon and they'll go into another field and next spring the actions of what they've been doing here now will take fruit.
There'll be seeds that right now are in prime position because they've got a bit of mushed up soil,
They are now in prime position to grow next year.
They're able to do that because of the cows and there's manure that beetles and worms will take back into the ground and nourish the soil and there'll be plants that will benefit because of that nourishment that's going back into the soil.
And what I like about this,
As I look at this meadow,
It's an easy way to see an ecosystem at work to see how everything benefits everything.
So the cows grazing,
Pulling up the grasses to make space for new growth next year,
The grasses benefit,
The cows benefit from the food,
The manure from the cows benefits the soil,
The trampling of the earth of the cows benefits the wildflowers that are going to grow next year that we just can't see at the moment but the seeds are probably going to be in prime position for growing.
And this is what I love about an ecosystem is that you become aware that there's this wonderful web of interaction and relationships between animals and plants that mean that the whole ecosystem stays healthy and you can't say one thing is more important than the other because they all interplay.
And it reminds me really of what we do in our lives is that we don't know what ecosystems we are a part of in so much as you might be doing things with people,
Strangers,
Or you might bump into somebody or you might say something to somebody or you might engage with somebody that you don't know,
It might be a friend,
It might be a family member,
You might be given a bit of a nudge to phone somebody up or touch base but you don't know what impact you're having on that ecosystem.
And you also don't know it might not be something that's instant,
It might be something that you are nourishing or fertilizing or supporting for some future growth to occur.
Today is a reflection and I'm going to use it for me,
It's just to continue putting out into the world that which feels right for me to do.
Nourishing information,
Information that points people back to their true selves,
Back to their true nature.
And I don't know whether that will land,
I don't know whether that will take growth,
I don't know whether in a year's time someone will say,
Oh that's what Liz was talking about.
It's not for me to know,
I just know that I am part of this wider ecosystem and if you're listening to this,
You're part of this ecosystem,
I'm part of your ecosystem and you're part of my ecosystem that we are interplaying together.
And there's one something wonderful about the unknown and there's something wonderful about not knowing the nourishment and enrichment that we might have in each other's lives without even realizing it.
