If you are fortunate enough to have access to a garden, a green space of your own, you are very fortunate indeed. And sometimes all you need to do to immerse yourself in nature is to spend a little time just sitting in the space outside your own home.
Bird feeders
Some of you may have read or heard of a recent piece questioning the benefits of feeding birds in our gardens (the article can be found here). And at first I was sceptical of this piece, but it does raise some valid points. Anyone that has ever sat and watched their feeders will know first hand that there are dominant species which fare better than others. And I agree entirely that proper cleaning of feeders, to lessen the likelihood of spreading disease amongst birds, is vitally important.
However, I am also still feeding birds and taking care of the feeders in the garden.
I do agree that birdlife in our gardens benefits greatly from making space for them in a more natural way - planting flowers such as sunflowers, creating ponds, putting in hedgerows and bushes, etc. I do think that those suggestions are great ways to support life in our gardens, and I have written pieces before about making space in our gardens for nature (really, go take a look when you're done here!), but there is a reason I think that these suggestions are so very worthwhile. Birds are losing natural spaces because of human activity - intensive farming; how we plan and build infrastructure.
The article makes little mention of this, and I think it's worth taking into consideration when discussing birds that come into competition with each other. I think there are greater things that need to be done to tackle the declining numbers, and so I continue to feed the birds.
But, for all the rationalising, I have to admit that my continued feeding of garden birds is also informed by the joy I get from seeing them out there, just outside the window. But I will keep an eye on any further studies and results that emerge; if it were ever definitively proven that feeding birds does them more harm than good, I think I would cease the practice.
Sitting in the garden with a good book
If you find yourself with some free time and the sun is out, I thoroughly recommend sitting in the garden with a favourite book (check out my last post here, on nature books). I like to sit on a blanket, just so that I can sit on the grass. Down where all the interesting things are.
As I sat with my book today, now and then peeking over the top of the page to see what was happening around me, I felt the air and the sunshine on my arms and legs. I listened to the songs and calls of the house sparrows that often visit the garden. As well as the flap and clap of a wood pigeon's wings. A shy collared dove visited for a moment but took off again when it noticed me, stretched out on my red blanket. I spotted an ichneumon wasp fly over, land for a while, and then take off again. Bumblebees and butterflies too. There was all sorts of life out there!
I recommend the book, and not music, because it doesn't make a noise. Why would you want to drown out all those sounds? But maybe you don't even need a book. Maybe you can just sit, immersed in nature. However, if you want to play some music, how about . . .
Bird song
When I was done reading - kind of, but also quite happy to let nature distract me - I took my phone up and decided to play some birdsong. Just to see if anything emerged from the ivy and the trees.
A day or so before, I had had some success with this YouTube video: Blue tit calls. At twenty-seven seconds, it isn't a long video but it got the attention of a blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) that perched itself at the end of a branch and seemed intrigued by what it heard.
Today, my audience was a robin (Erithacus rubecula), which flitted about and seemed to be in conversation with the robin calls in this video: a robin singing. I replayed this video a few times and the robin it attracted stayed, replying to the song in the video. Every time the bird in the video went silent, the bird in the garden sang a response.
If I were ruled by my own joy and pleasure, I might still be sitting out there now, watching the bird - it perched quite close by in the foliage - respond to the video, but I couldn't do that to the little red-breasted bird. It didn't know it was singing to a recording and I didn't know what they were talking about. I could have been causing a great amount of confusion!
I am sure it will get over it though. It must have any number of greater challenges to face!
Cultivating and propagating
Did you know, that there is a bacteria in soil that has an antidepressant effect on you?
Well, that's enough to get me wrist deep in the dirt!
I started with some wildflowers and a strawberry plant. The flowers were planted a little late and are still young, but the strawberry plant has come on quite well. I now have a handful of young strawberries growing on my parent plant, and I have potted up a plant that has grown off from the parent plant on a runner.
Unfortunately, when I checked today, I found that my wildflowers and my second strawberry plant were looking a bit limp. I am hoping that all they needed was a bit off water and some time out of the heat that we have had for a couple of days. Apart from being a little limp, they are still green and otherwise look okay.
Of course, my main reason for getting into gardening has been to provide spaces for nature and wildlife. To that end, as well as the wildflowers that I have planted, I have oxe-eye daisies and poppies in the soil, but I don't expect to see any flowers on them until next year now. I also have some evening primrose seeds that I will be sowing next year. The evening primrose gives off scent in the evening and is a flower that night-flying moths will much appreciate in the garden!
Well, that's a little glimpse into how I like to spend some time in the garden. As I say, there's a lot out there. And if you look under a table, get your fingers in the dirt, or listen to the sounds around you, there's a lot of joy to be derived from the beauty of it all too.
How about you? What are your spaces like? If you don't have a garden, do you make use of pots and hangers on a balcony? Or do you visit parks instead?
If you enjoyed reading, you can buy me a coffee over on ko-fi - it fuels my writing and my adventures in nature!
Thank you for reading, I hope to see you again soon.
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