The planets really have aligned this year. It’s said that this won’t happen again until 2040. While we’re all gazing at the sky at night some Marshians landed at a petrol station during the day.

There’s a gateway into the meadows that nobody (but me) uses.

I’d really like to see this used more. It hasn’t been because it’s overgrown and strewn with rubbish. Well it was. People have camped there but have now moved on. When you’ve been living in a tent and get somewhere else you don’t take your tent. Or any of the detritus that accompanies living rough. And if you buy a snack from the petrol station it’s too easy to throw the wrapper or bottle over the fence. And if you use the car wash (which has gone now, thankfully) you clear the accumulated junk inside your car at the same time. And it ends up on the patch of “waste” ground next door. One drivers waste ground is a Marshians habitat.

It’s the edge of town. I like it. It’s the transition from town to country, an edge land.

But it needs work, the sort of work Marshians can do. That rubbish needs to go to the tip. I couldn’t do it, but an alignment occurred. Someone at the council said he’d help. He delivered litter pickers and bags. And the marshians said they’d help too.

Over the weekend the sun shone.

Then a bunch of Marshians turned up and an hour later the land was spotless.

We enjoyed doing it too. When the world seems to have gone mad, fixing a rubbish strewn patch is quite uplifting.

Even if the unseasonal heat was a bit of a worry we revelled in it.

It’s the very end of the old abandoned railway line but with building works and deliveries and some fencing the route people have been using has become unpleasant, and this would be a way of dodging it. To celebrate, the next day some more Marshians appeared to admire it and use it and we set off for a couple of hours wandering along the rest of the railway line and then back via the Holy Brook.

Even though the marshes were really flooded (for the fifth time this winter!) we were able to leave wellies at home, for the first time this winter. It really felt like spring. There was bird song and snowdrops. The Cherry Plum trees were in flower and it was actually warm.

A roe deer buck watched from the middle of the marsh

A hind watched us from the back garden of a house alongside the Holy Brook.

And a bunch of happy Marshians got to have a lovely few hours in their marshes.