There’s a frog in the watering can. Like a genie in a lamp or a spectre banished to a vessel, the surprise at seeing the frog makes them feel more real than the object that encloses them; they’re ominous.
Maybe the frog hopped into the watering can by accident and can’t get out, but now they have appeared there is a connection between us. Like the 19th-century idea of abiogenesis – the spontaneous generation of living organisms from non-living matter – it feels more like the workings of a seance than biology.
It has been a strange road to spring this year, and full of omens – blood moons and planetary alignments – and although it is beautifully sunny now, the vernal equinox resonated with the horrors of terrible and disturbing events in the world. At the heart of this weirdness is a frog in a few inches of water at the bottom of a watering can. We lower the can into the pond until it fills and then tip them gently into what we imagine is freedom.
The frog remains motionless on the surface. They have inflated like a blimp, legs bent, toes and webs spread, eyes bulbous, grin fixed. They make no attempt to swim away but maintain their pose of surprise, mimicking ours, as if we can’t see them if they stay stiff, and if we did we may mistake them for a dead thing or a frightening thing or a thing that shouldn’t be looked at or touched in case they explode. We retreat, and after a while the frog loosens into life; golden-green skin, lithe limbs and whirligig eyes waver into aquatic shadows as they shuffle out of sight into the pond.
Up on the Old Oswestry hill fort, sunlight flashes on mysterious ponds in the earthworks, their emerald mop-heads of water starwort, the candles of reedmace and flickers of amphibious presence – the future has arrived. The strange beauty of life that appears from nowhere is redolent with the ritual of the spring equinox. What observances did those who lived here for a thousand years make to the nothing or nowhere from which wonders such as frogs arose and to which they returned?
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
