In an attempt to bring some balance between my work and the rest of my life, I’ve endeavoured to rediscover the joy of gardens. The sapphic desire to write this like an 18th century Countess and sprinkle it with innuendo is strong, but I’m far too feral for such things so I’ll stick to what I know.
Over the past few years the creeping effect that Home and Gardens are where I work, and enjoying wildlife has been relegated to holidays and long weekends, has not resulted in a particularly good balance for me. Which brings me to this. Poking fun at travel blogs and myself in several meandering blog posts.
A Reintroduction
You may have heard that the United Kingdom is the most ecologically depleted country in Europe, no amount of politics will remove you from a geographical description and no amount of green washing will change the fact that this is true. However, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to appreciate and no way of fixing it. Look at me, trying my hand at optimism.
Gardens cover a huge area and, although not a home to every species in the UK, they could become a part of how we restore it. To achieve that, people have to give a shit about what visits their garden and feel a connection too it. Which means they have to be able to see it. The easiest way to see wildlife is and always will be bribery. Setting up a bird table, a mouse feeding station or a bowl of cat-food, is the best way to convince wildlife to visit, even if they refuse to make themselves visible until your camera is one flight of stairs and a sphinx riddles away. Granted a bowl of meat won’t only be an indulgence for the local hedgehogs and foxes but every cat within half a square mile will also descend upon you.
I don’t do this currently. Perhaps it’s the fact the Terrier who also calls the garden home would explode if foxes stayed in her garden any longer than was necessary. Or perhaps the memory of my first remote camera that I saves up for only had a live feed, since I was 11 and anything more advanced was out of my budget of pocket and chore money. The food was laid out, I could here the owls and even a fox at one point, but the only visitor was a large grey cat who dropped in at about 4am to eat the food so clearly put there for him. The disappointment would have been horrendous if I hadn’t been so tired. I still pine for a remote camera, but that’s mainly because I’m pining for a fancy bitch remote camera which is still out of my budget range. I have my own two eyes though, a cup of tea and once in a blue moon I even allow myself time to listen and to watch.
Watching the garden slowly wake up after winter is something I think more people should indulge in. This can be from the emergence of crocuses, snowdrops and bluebells to the shift in beast behaviour. Blue tits checking out a nest box you were convinced they would ignore, just as they had in previous years, rooks ripping twigs from trees for their nests and the sound of birds yelling at each other, or the music of birdsong. Whichever you prefer.
These small moment remind me of why I love to go hiking on my own, why I adore zoology. My fascination didn’t start off with encyclopedias and internet rabbit holes, though they enable my madness wonderfully, it started because I was a feral child who had an aversion to wearing shoes, let alone sitting at a laptop. I spent all that time spotting birds, matching them with feathers I found. Trying to follow squirrels for as long and as far as I could, watching them flit through branches getting increasingly more concerned about the strange little monkey scampering and scrambling beneath them.
I’d lose site of them eventually or become flighty at the idea of crossing a certain boundary, usually because of some formless monster in my imaginings, or this vague idea of the teenagers who build dens and shouted in the old ruins and woods. Later I would find out one of these formless teenaged entities was called Ryan and that they were mainly focused on building fortifications against the other group of teenagers. These intimidating and frightening creatures were probably only about 12.
This was around the age when over the summer holidays, my long suffering mum would tell me and my siblings to at least come into sight of the kitchen windows when the rooks flew in to roost. I remember layed out a huge trampoline gazing into the sky as they all flew over and for the first time in years I managed to do the same thing, sans trampoline, bedtime and a lot less muddy and a with pair of shoes on my feet.
It is weird to feel like a visitor somewhere that is still your home. Maybe it’s in part because people can’t garden for so much of their lives, unless they are very lucky, it leads to them feeling disconnected to their local ecosystem and The Garden feels even less like their home. Most landlords will threaten your deposit if you show so much as a photo of hedge strimmers to your bushes, others will insist you maintain a well kept garden without so much as a pair of secateurs. Speaking as a gardener, in my professional opinion, maintaining a hedge usually involves some cutting.
Gardens are fantastic and if I may indulge in being an 18th Century aristocrat for a moment, I think gardens should be romanticised a little more. So, allow me to reintroduce you to Gardens since we’re all to broke to go anywhere else.
Wonderfully Weird 