Neatness obsession

Sir, Gorgeous day today! I was surrounded by a host of brilliant yellow wild flowers and so many bees doing due diligence as they gathered nectar from one flower then another.

Fascinating how each bee was specialising in only one species – for one bee it was hawkbit for another clover for another tormentil. I just was so glad we leave the grass with all the wildflowers growing freely around the house.

The beauty was not to last. First the angry noise of the strimmer; next the poisonous fumes of half-burnt petrol. Both totally inescapable.

After three hours it ceased. I came out of my house into the sunshine.

Only the lingering smell of petrol fumes and the less than pleasant smell of mashed up grass. And a field that had been vibrant green now a dead looking pale yellow.

I went with my rake to clear the debris from the edge of the track between my house and the next. It was a small strip and it did not take long.

However to my horror amongst the remains of the grass were the remains of a slow worm – head and tail crudely strimmed off. I imagined its terror as the awful machine of its execution drew nearer and nearer. Did it try to flee at first until there seemed to be no escape?

If that is from one short strip of grass how many more are lying dead in the field strimmed at the same time? And how many thousands all over the island are slaughtered every summer all in the cause of grass being made to comply with the ideal of a golf course putting green? I just wish people would wake up to what they are doing to nature with their obsession with neatness.

Let the wildflowers and the beautiful grasses and the bees, butterflies and all God’s little creatures flourish instead.

Yours,

Peter Finlay, High Corrie.