Old Warden, Bedfordshire In this parched landscape it was clear the hedgerow fruit had not ripened a moment too soon for the badgers
It took only a few dry weeks for the fields on the plateau above the village to forget that it had ever rained. The clay soil was beginning to crack, the footpath had turned to a sun-baked dirt track and there was no yield underfoot. Every bump and stone was hard and uncompromisingly contoured, jabbing at an instep, stubbing a toe.
The worms had become dustbowl refugees in this parched landscape, sinking deep underground. Far below my feet, they would be aestivating, bunched up in knots, coated in their own mucus in a hibernation-like suspension of active life, waiting for moisture to come again.
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Source: Guardian Environment