Why don't you just sit on the allotment and enjoy the peace and quiet?
Three people have suggested this to me recently, so I decided to go and sit under the damson tree.
Take a pebble someone suggested. I picked up a lovely smooth toffee-like piece of flint, ochre yellow, about an inch and a half long. I was going to examine its cracks and fissures and its crazed surface.
It was a bit dirty so I decided to wash it so that its colours would come out.
There was a sound rather like a squeak coming from the bath which is being turned into a pond. A toad. Resting its front legs on the black plastic liner, small body inflated with fear, sending out ripples.
I washed the pebble and immediately went back for the toad.
A pebble is inanimate. It grows warm from the warmth of your hand. It lies smooth in your palm. It invites thoughts on time, and history and clay. Slow pebbles work themselves to the surface season by season from the subsoil of ages.
A toad is cold, where the water has brought its temperature down, but as its body warms it begins to become restive. Still inflated its sides but now eager to escape from your cupped hands.
I put the toad down on the asparagus patch, close to the place where I know that frogs and toads lie up until the evening comes. First it returned to its proper size, then it paused, and finally it crawled away.
I have kept the pebble, like a tiny stone egg. My toad is safe.
