Worms are good for the Garden

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Written November 2020

As I've mentioned before, these weeks of isolation have brought me new insights, generally 'confined to barracks' as we are. It's been a time to discover what's important, and who really is, who matters, and who think that I matter. We've rediscovered the importance of family; friendships have deepened. For me that has included a beautiful garden. It's become a place of increasing importance for us. It's been where we've been able to observe a little more detail, be these of birds or insects, flowers and trees, and even aspects of the inanimate world hidden in the foliage. And inevitably memories have been stirred. I've shared some of those over the weeks.

Even the compost heap can be a place for observation. The birds can't wait to get at the worms unearthed as we've forked what's there. They wriggled out, big, fat, juicy ones - earthworms! And with them the memories!

My first year at medical school included zoology, complete with a dissecting laboratory - frogs, crayfish, a cockroach, and a dogfish. First on the list was the lowly earthworm. I can't remember much about its anatomy but do remember shaking as I snipped him open and pinned him down. Was that meant to be practice for the following year dissection as we studied human anatomy?

Later years were to introduce me to other worms. Probably the most ubiquitous of all: ascaris, the roundworm, picked up from eating 'soiled' and uncooked food. They can give quite a fright to an unsuspecting carrier. They're generally quite harmless but can produce intestinal obstruction, a clump of them showing up on X-ray like spaghetti junction. Then there's the threadworm causing perianal itching; whipworms and pinworms and in some parts of the world, the hookworm contracted through the sole of the barefoot walking on contaminated soil. They sap blood from the bowel leading to anaemia. These worms!

And then worms that get into the blood stream - filaria, causing elephantiasis, hydatid that produces cysts in the liver and lung. And there’s bilharzia from swimming in contaminated water affecting bladder and bowel. But the pork that's used for our breakfast bacon has been inspected, so we're unlikely to have got tapeworm.

Yes, I agree this is not a topic for a Saturday morning breakfast. And I promise, should we ever gather when this is all over, I'll not bore you with medical minutiae.

Nor will I tell you about the 44-gallon drum I used for earthworm culture during our Zambian days. I'd feed them with over-ripe paw-paw. And the worms would get threaded onto the hook of my fishing rod early Saturday morning on the occasional day off. Just an hour at sunrise by the Chikankata lake would be as good as the peaceful shores of Galilee. And home for a breakfast of fried bream - just a taste for each of the family.

Nor should I tell you about me feeding the family with a Saturday morning breakfast during our Upper Norwood days. A piece of oval-shaped cardboard with the centre coloured yellow - a pretend egg, and alongside that a few earthworms. It was April Fools Day, but I was not very popular with a disgusted family.

But back to the garden here and forking the compost heap. The crows gather again. They've got them. The earthworms! And as if that's not enough, they go pecking the lawn for more. I look closely - can I see the worm wriggling in the crop, mashed up with stones before it goes down to the gizzard for the start of digestion? He's very well fed. Mind you, so am I.

Although things remain unchanged for some of us, most will benefit from the projected easing up of lockdown, so it seems an appropriate moment to conclude these weekly blogs to the 'breakfast boys'.

A concluding word: if trees and flowers, birds and insects and even worms matter, so do we. We all do!

One final question for you: Is it true that one is closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth? You must know what I think by now.
 
May 2020