Out of the blue, a friend asked me if I had ever heard of tardigrades.
This bit of information must have passed me by all my life, because I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
I think this is surprising because there are countless numbers of them, all around us in the great outdoors.
Google, as usual, was a great help.
They are apparently vital in the great scheme of things in that they are a food source for other microorganisms which live in the soil and provide the nutrients necessary for its decomposition.
In fact, they seem to be right up there in the important food chain. It would also seem that I must have millions of the things on my roof because they thrive in the moss that grows there.
These microscopic monsters are the most resilient of creatures, living almost anywhere, from the tops of mountains to the depths of oceans, from ice to hot springs, and they particularly love mosses and lichens.
They have even been found in five million year old fossils so they‘ve been kicking around for quite a long time.
They’re not very pretty
In fact, basically they are just a head and they’re so ugly that their structure and clumsy movements have been the inspiration for many of the baddies in science fiction, only considerably enlarged of course.
In close up pictures you can see a sort of minute nose and up-tilted, closed eyes, and then four segments with eight pairs of legs.
They’re also known as water bears or moss piglets.
I don’t have to love them of course, but since my friend sort of introduced me, and I’ve read a fraction of the reams about them on Google, I have got a little bit interested.
At least if I leave the moss on my roof I’m doing a bit towards rewilding!
At last I’ve been out on Genevieve
She and I haven’t had a good airing since last October, it was especially gratifying.
Someone told me that there wasn’t much to look at but I found lots.
It was fine and sunny and the sun glowed on the leaves of the Hart’s Tongue ferns on the banks of the ditches.
Mosses growing on the old trunks of trees in the hedges gleamed like well brushed velvet and back-lit the large holly tree near the bottom of Rowden Mill Lane. Celandines gleamed from the verges and a few clumps of Primroses joined them here and there.
A bank of the stream has been cleared leaving the water clear and gurgling beneath the pack horse bridge.
I can’t see how far the clearance goes, but it has certainly made a big difference and, presumably has helped towards cutting down on the flooding at that point.
The hedges have been cut back – it’s amazing how ravaged they look to begin with and how they recover so quickly.
All hedge cutting had been delayed because of the never ending rain, and by October they had grown so much that the lane felt as though it was enclosed by high walls.
Now, though there was no obvious change in them, they look as though they are ready for tiny leaf buds to make their first clue that something different will happen very soon.
Everywhere was wonderfully silent.
Somewhere in the distance I could hear a tractor and watched it toil its way up and down a far off field, otherwise nothing.
No birds because they don‘t often sing in the early afternoon, and not even the distant barking of a dog.
And the views – oh I have missed the views of the distant misty hills and the trees silhouetted against the skyline.
There is something different about those trees too.
They don’t look quite as stark now but seem to hold the promise of spring.
Yes, it was a deeply satisfying outing and as I bumped my way over the track home, I thought, spring is really on its way.