Foxglove

THE hens have been banned from the vegetable garden for the summer, about which they are indignant.

Each autumn we take the fence down and allow them unfettered access until the small plot is planted again. If you want the soil to be raked over with diligence, and the eggs of slugs and snails to be devoured, along with wireworms and multiple-legged small things that have designs on greenery, this is as organic a way as you will find.

By the time they are excluded again, the fowl will have manured the plot lightly and removed hordes of damaging invertebrates. Of course, the hens would eat our vegetables to the soil, and rake out the remains, if allowed in all summer, and I tell them this as they crowd around my feet.

They reply in soft querulous voices, confirming or denying, until I find some grain with which to distract them. Above me, the apple blossom is crisp on the bough, and we might have a good crop this year, if the seed sets before the wind strips the petals.

My thoughts are interrupted by a small furry body that falls out of the elder tree by the hedge, and lands pancaked on the ground, stunned. That was a considerable fall for a vole, and he does not look as if he will survive it.

The dogs I can hold back with a gesture; not so the hens, which would kill him in a moment, but mercifully they are still pecking at their wheat. So much of our wildlife depends on voles, and we need a hearty population. I wonder if this one has been dropped by a bird of prey, for though there is nothing preventing voles climbing trees, they mostly prefer to stay on the ground.

This one stirs as I watch, opens its bright dark eyes and tests its tiny limbs. It is beginning to revive, and I wonder if it has escaped without sustaining damage after all. I stay, my presence and human scent enough to deflect any approach from small ground enemies such as weasels, and larger avian ones that would like to dine on vole.

Eventually of course it will provide dinner for someone, for that is the way of the wild world, but perhaps not just yet. There is plenty of food here to raise a family of voles, but because our garden offers habitat for any number of creatures, it is touch and go who survives and who does not, and sometimes human interference is necessary. Rats must not be allowed to stay, but voles are easier company.

Finally the little creature regains sufficient composure to stand, and though I doubt it can see me, it certainly notices my scent. All at once it is off, shakily, into the hedge and away to whatever its future offers.

The dogs come forward, sniffing around where it has been, and pushing their noses against me in case I want to discuss what they know. Perhaps now that I have finished with the vegetables, we could go for another walk, is what they are asking. And after checking that the hens are where they are supposed to be, I think that this is a good idea too, so I go to find my hat and stick, escorted by waving tails.

This first appeared in the West Sussex Gazette on May 14. To read it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.