COUNTRYSIDE NOTES JULY 2020 NATURE FIGHTS BACK

Mother Nature has certainly been flexing her muscles in the last few months. She doesn’t want us to forget who is really in charge. It almost seems as if she wishes to punish the human race for our abuse of the planet. As farmers across the world know that, to a certain extent, technology and modern machinery can compensate for her actions, but they can’t control them. She’s certainly been reminding us of that lately. She’d already been taunting us with climate change and denied us winter weather sufficiently cold enough to kill off some of the nasties. Instead, she assailed us with incessant rainfall making life a misery for man, flooding thousands of homes and acres of land. I wrote about this in the G4April issue. At the time I commented that the weather needed to change dramatically for farmers to get onto their waterlogged land and sow their crops. Soon after I submitted the article Coronavirus restrictions were imposed and immediately Mother Nature turned the tap off and the heater on, serving up unseasonably hot temperatures with virtually no rain for the following ten weeks. The weather went from one extreme to the other but lockdown denied us the freedom to go and do whatever we pleased in the phenomenal spring sunshine. There have always been plagues and pestilence as Mother Nature was reminding us. Even though life on Earth has advanced so far it doesn’t make us exempt. A few irresponsible people succumbed to her temptation and were enticed onto beaches in perilous numbers. The incredible weather continued until restrictions were eased. Then, as if to coincide with this, Mother Nature suddenly lowered the temperature and turned on the tap again. The parched land and the plants attempting to grow in it were desperate for rain but she delivered a cruel twist with the coldness, a death blow to young chicks. With modern technology it’s ironic that man can enter space but only if the weather permits the rocket he’s in to take off! It puts in perspective who actually controls what we’re able to do. The jet stream is a meandering current of high-speed winds which forms between two air masses of very different temperatures, five to nine miles above the Earth. Experts blame this for influencing our weather. But what manipulates the jet stream? What message did it send when coronavirus restrictions were eased and the priority for some was to head straight for Mcdonalds? Also, when thousands of protesters gathered shoulder to shoulder ostensibly to demonstrate against something, appalling as it was, that didn’t even happen in our country. They were playing a game of Russian roulette with their health and ours. Is it possible that Mother Nature has been teaching us a lesson? Is she re-establishing her authority? We humans are reluctant to acknowledge that there is a greater force than us. We are puppets and she pulls the strings. We need to respect her for the power she has over us.