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| Country diary: life and loss of a riverside meadow | Country diary: life and loss of a riverside meadow |
| (4 months later) | |
| Sandy, Bedfordshire Once full of lambs, today the field is a thigh-high forest of vegetation and saplings rise above the jungle | |
| Derek Niemann | |
| Tue 26 Sep 2017 05.30 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 16.26 GMT | |
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| Down by the river is a place that five springs ago was a field full of lambs. I had spent a couple of years there acting as “lookerer” (or volunteer shepherd) for a flock of Southdown sheep, and on one blossom-filled morning of cuckoo flowers and lesser celandines, I helped the shepherd with a difficult birth. | Down by the river is a place that five springs ago was a field full of lambs. I had spent a couple of years there acting as “lookerer” (or volunteer shepherd) for a flock of Southdown sheep, and on one blossom-filled morning of cuckoo flowers and lesser celandines, I helped the shepherd with a difficult birth. |
| His flock had brought joy to little children of the town, who came to squeal at the babies and their teddy-bear-faced parents. But a man was seen cycling into the flock to grab a new-born lamb from its dam, so that he could take it to give his son a better look. Another unseen visitor let their dog savage three of the sheep and left them to die. I doubt the shepherd was humming “Sheep may safely graze” when he gave up on the field in despair. | His flock had brought joy to little children of the town, who came to squeal at the babies and their teddy-bear-faced parents. But a man was seen cycling into the flock to grab a new-born lamb from its dam, so that he could take it to give his son a better look. Another unseen visitor let their dog savage three of the sheep and left them to die. I doubt the shepherd was humming “Sheep may safely graze” when he gave up on the field in despair. |
| A few years earlier, there had been cattle in the field. I remember seeing – from the other side of the river – a woman allowing her dog to “run with the cows”. What fun. | A few years earlier, there had been cattle in the field. I remember seeing – from the other side of the river – a woman allowing her dog to “run with the cows”. What fun. |
| Today, the field is a thigh-high forest of vegetation, where rank grass has been overwhelmed by willowherb, which in turn is half smothered in bindweed. Two summers ago, I met a police officer searching in vain for the purse she had dropped into this all-swallowing thicket during a moonlit riverside chase on foot. | Today, the field is a thigh-high forest of vegetation, where rank grass has been overwhelmed by willowherb, which in turn is half smothered in bindweed. Two summers ago, I met a police officer searching in vain for the purse she had dropped into this all-swallowing thicket during a moonlit riverside chase on foot. |
| There are babies here again, two or three times taller than me. Twenty-two willow and alder saplings rise head and leafy shoulders above the jungle. The alders, with fleshy scalloped leaves and thickening waists, stand unbending, but the slender willows are on nodding terms with the lightest of breezes. The air is still. A single twiglet on a sapling upwind quivers and I feel my face cool. | There are babies here again, two or three times taller than me. Twenty-two willow and alder saplings rise head and leafy shoulders above the jungle. The alders, with fleshy scalloped leaves and thickening waists, stand unbending, but the slender willows are on nodding terms with the lightest of breezes. The air is still. A single twiglet on a sapling upwind quivers and I feel my face cool. |
| On Victorian maps, cartographers labelled this field White’s Meadow and wrote “liable to flooding” in brackets. I have waded through knee-deep water here through more than one winter. But what future does the meadow have? Might developers move in to build houses on stilts? Or is it simply reverting to woodland, by accident if not design? | On Victorian maps, cartographers labelled this field White’s Meadow and wrote “liable to flooding” in brackets. I have waded through knee-deep water here through more than one winter. But what future does the meadow have? Might developers move in to build houses on stilts? Or is it simply reverting to woodland, by accident if not design? |
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