little things that become bigger.
I started this morning with nothing to write about. Then I went down to make my coffee and a crow stood croaking on the fence but six feet from the door. He must have missed out on the breakfast bread this morning and was demanding a late meal. I had met him/her before a couple of days ago, probably one of on the newer ones on the block.
How creatures come to live with us, noting our habits and normally calling at our homes at night when we are out of the way. I was sad when the new patio was built next door the other day, the blackberry bush that flourished there bought in bees and butterflies to our urban home and had now disappeared without a trace. But we have let our small back yard flourish with plants and bees and hoverflies came to visit. How does nature grow we ask.
At the bottom of the steps in the small yard there is a wild violet plant that starts early in the year, where is the soil for it to grow? it was then superseded by a stray aquilegia and now a pretty blue star like flowers tumble over the step with gay abandon. Nature is always generous with her bounty.
So when I came across this Guardian video this morning, I laughed happily that someone is always ready to poke their heads above the parapet and yell out for the wild places to be reborn. For the sanctuary for our wild creatures to live on this earth in peace.
Dragonflies and damselflies 2008
interesting video - i'm all for a bit of rewilding.....i think Dawn would have a fit if we removed all the non-natives from our garden..... not sure what we'd be left with..... a pile of dog poo and a holly bush?
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to remove non-natives, just halve the garden into two bits A/F.
ReplyDeleteI sent the video on to my daughter. They have done lovely things with their backyard area and they have seen lots of animals passing by.
ReplyDeleteI have had several bunnies visiting the garden outside my kitchen window. They seem to come to nibble whenever I am sitting down for a meal so it's like we are eating together!?!
I loved the tale of the rabbits joining in the meal Ellen. A real Peter Rabbit story, did you plant lettuces for them?
DeleteNo they just nibble on the weeds and ground cover there...
DeleteI love your video, Thelma. That is so wonderful. I thought of our little 11 acres...we have a swamp. We have the woods. We can build on this in a wildly wonderful way!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the video Debby, it made me giggle "little 11 acres" that would be a lot in this country. Have to ask, do you have crocodiles in your swamp?
ReplyDeleteWe surely do not. As far as I know, we have very few crocodiles anywhere. We do have alligators in the US, but their natural range is the south eastern United States. What the swamps do support is a nice deer population. We have bears sometimes, but they are big bumbling creatures with poor eyesight who rarely cause a bother. And birds! plenty of birds in the swamp. Right now, we have blue heron, and oh dear, what a racket they make. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-10bYUgazw I think that there are three of them, and the noise really is quite freakish when they get fired up.
DeleteDo you know I need to be sent back to school, at least to geography lessons to learn about the different ecological systems in America. Our herons are so quiet, they stand at the side of rivers or lakes for hours like long legged old men waiting patiently for a fish to swim by. As for deer Britain has plenty of them, they roam fairly freely everywhere, Scotland being the most famous place to find them. Thanks for the link.
DeleteIn truth, I never heard a blue heron in my life until recently. I got out of the car and heard a shriek from the swamp. "What in the actual hell was that?" It went on and on. Tim studied the situation and said, "I think it is a blue heron." Further watching indicates 3 of them. Is this mating season? It seems late-ish. Perhaps they've mated and are raising their families. Perhaps the children are doing all the shrieking. Our swamp is made by beavers damming a small creek. We've reclaimed some of the land, but there is still a bit of the wetland. The beaver have a huge colony upstream and have the most enormous dam I've ever seen. As the water backed up, the dam was built higher and wider. An elderly couple lived there, and I don't think they walked to the back of their property in a very long time. It is mostly underwater, and I don't even know how on earth you would begin to move a dam that size. As the beaver population grew, the beaver began to move away from the big dam and that is how we ended up with a few of them moving onto our property.
DeleteI have seen your deer roaming at Bradgate park as I walked. It really was beautiful, those ancient oaks and the ruins and those deer.
Re: property sizes. Ours is small. My sister and BIL own 90 acres. Her sons both own well over 100. Our property had originally been much much larger, but the additional acreage had been sold off to a lumber company years back. I don't think we need huge acreage, to be honest. We have no intentions of farming on a large scale, but we have enough land to be good stewards of it, and to create an orchard and a berry plot in addition to the raised beds.
All interesting Debby. We are only just beginning to add beavers to our landscape, some farmers don't want them but they are seen as ecological developers. As for property size there is plenty of land to go around in America and I suppose the poorer the land it becomes cheaper. Wales and of course Scotland has a lot of empty spaces but of course again it is difficult to farm certain areas. It all happens down South and of course the East which grows a lot of our crops.
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