Country diary: The snails are back to reclaim my garden – and leave behind a little artwork | Josie George

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: So much to admire in these creatures, from their resilience over summer, to the detailed pattern of their trails

Here’s a lovely word: aestivate. It’s what my garden snails did through the parched weeks of our summer drought, pulling their bodies high up into their shells and closing the door. Here’s another: epiphragm – the pearl-like door they make to keep moisture in as they slow their hearts and their breathing, until just a thread of life remains.

Pretty words, but such power in them. Over the summer I’d find these snails, dry and still, and hold them in my hands before tucking them back behind my garden pots. This is it, I’d think, the irony of our times: there’s us humans, all-powerful and cruelly dismissive of everything that is not us, hurtling towards changes in our climate that our bodies are entirely unequipped to deal with. And then here are snails, not invulnerable either, but with more forbearance than we could ever dream of.

Even so, both my small friends and I have been celebrating since the rain returned. I keep stepping into my garden, tipping my face to the sky, and seeing them move slowly and determinedly across the slick walls and paths to eat everything that remains from the summer – the clematis, the hostas, the snapdragons.

Yes, autumn is here and the snails are back to rule their world again. What deep comfort there is in that. And what do they leave in their wake? Art. My dirty garden furniture has become a canvas. Lacy, spiralling lines cut through the algae. Look closely and you’ll see the triangular pattern of their radula – a kind of conveyor-belt tongue covered in microscopic teeth – as they scrape, move, scrape. Keep your eyes open and you’ll see their mark everywhere; the bridge over to our local Sainsbury’s has become a veritable gallery for snail expression. Like all great art, it isn’t surface decoration but an act of reclamation and defiance.

Here’s to resilience, then, and the ability to turn the necessary business of living into something slow, delicate, meaningful – something that leaves beauty in its wake.

• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com