Wawings ... and "Leaving Something Behind - A Garden Planted (Reprise)"

Beautiful Birds and the Importance of Gardens

Cedar Waxwings

Everyone knows Cedar Waxwings, so probably no need for many words here. Suffice it to say that to my eye they are one of the most beautiful of all birds with their smart uniforms and clean lines. A couple of days ago they happened to notice that there are berries on the Amelanchier canadensis tree outside our window … not ripe yet but worthwhile checking over just in case. Here are a couple of photos for you to enjoy - they bullied their way, unplanned, onto the page ahead of the main article.

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🌟 Now - turning to the real meat of this week’s newsletter …

The Gardener will be there a Lifetime.

"Through gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land."
- Julie Moir Messervy

Eleven months ago, a couple of weeks after I started this gardening and local wildlife newsletter, I wrote about what gardening means to us. Back then I had but a tiny readership and was still finding my feet. Today I find, rather gratifyingly, that there is a considerably larger number of subscribers and followers than I ever expected. So, I thought that as we approach mid-summer it would not be inapposite to roll the short article out again for everyone to read. I have made just a few amendments and additions to bring it up to date.

This quotation came to my attention. It was written by the science fiction author Ray Bradbury, (Fahrenheit 451 etc) and dates back to 1954.

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

I’m getting on in years, no denying the fact. With no kids to fuss about, I have to say that worrying over a material legacy is not something that I give much thought to. Whatever is left when the time comes will be disposed of neatly and a significantly large chunk of it will end up supporting Canadian conservation charities. Nevertheless, I was quite taken by the thinking behind the quote above because gardens, and the wildlife that lives in them, matter A LOT to J and I. While I know full well that our gardens, all gardens, are ephemeral and will probably be transformed when we can no longer care for them into something we might not care for, at least we will know that for a while we made a garden that we enjoy and that makes life easier in some small way for local wildlife. I am confident that our final garden will be “ … changed from the way it was before we touched it, into something that's like us after we take our hands away.”

Happily, the social norms of gardening are changing for the better. There is still far too much unimaginative monoculture lawn care going on, too often outsourced to noisy contractors busily cutting the grass to within an inch of its life. For all that though, the gardening media and the internet carry increasing numbers of articles about rewilding, habitat restoration, native planting and pollinator gardening — important things that we strive to apply ourselves. Over the years, neighbours and friends have visited us asking to see what we are doing on our plot – and clearly they like the concept even when they often don’t know where to start themselves.

A typical visit begins with a family coming around the side of the house to be faced with a wall of green, bursting with native flowers (50+ species and counting) in all colours. On a warm day, it is buzzing with bees and other pollinating insects while birds sing from the bushes. Before the questions start coming (“Beautiful, but I wouldn’t know where to start” being common), the children almost always run down the wood-chip paths between the plantings and disappear into a small wooded area to the rear under the trees and behind the pond. There they lose themselves while we adults talk. This is the part that I always like the best and probably the best way to spread the word by example – especially for the children, who have usually never seen a garden corner where they can lose themselves unsupervised, without adults watching their every movement. All this in a modest suburban plot of just 15,000 sq.ft ! Of course, there is a place in the world for more formal and traditional garden design, heaven knows we have done enough of it ourselves in earlier years. This is not the place to be prescriptive about what others should do. Each to their own, so long as it doesn’t involve leaf blowers.

My grandfather was a gardener, as was J’s father and his father and grandfather too. A good start for the nurturing of future gardeners. As a kid, a lifetime ago, I enjoyed nothing more than the couple of weeks each summer we stayed with him. He let me have the run of his land in a small village on the edge of the Exmoor National Park in the West of England. It was just a regular garden, like ours, not the parkland around the “Big House”. At the front there was a lawn because this was the sixties and he was born in the 1800s, but round the back he had a small fruit orchard, vegetable beds, trees, and bushes and a chicken run and that was where I liked to be. I learned about digging and soil preparation and pruning, and spent hours picking raspberries for the family to eat and collecting eggs for breakfast. There was no formal instruction, but I learned a lot just by watching and “helping” as kids do - this included how to kill and prepare a chicken for dinner. Subsequently, we lived in several houses, all with at least some garden. The last house in England before we came to Canada in 1998 was not much more than an average bungalow but the garden was unusually large and came with beehives and an orchard of sorts at the bottom of it. Wonderful things are beehives. Mostly, we learned our gardening craft by trial and error and much reading. Hands-on training is best, getting a feel for soil and seeds and recognizing what the leaves on plants are telling us about their needs.

Today, in what is more than likely going to be our last garden, we have removed the lawn entirely, installed a pond with a “bird magnet” waterfall and filled the open space with multiple (mostly) native plants. Many of them grow as tall as we are and by July and August are heavy with gorgeous flowers. Insects abound – though not as many as there should be due to climate change and the like. The trees and bushes are home to many species of birds such that we have a garden bird list, after 26 years, standing at just over 120 species, of which we regularly will see 80-90 in any given year.

It’s really rather wonderful. Especially now that I am into (new word I recently discovered) into my “elderhood”.

And so “… the difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

Morning has broken, etc

Morning has broken
like the first morning,
blackbird has spoken
like the first bird.
(An awful cliché, I know, but it is by far the best time of day to be out there)

Biodiversity:

Quote: “Each individual insect that you see may host (on average) a unique species of mite, nematode, microsporidian fungus, apicomplexan protist, and 11 bacterial species”

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Just in case you have not found it …

This newsletter comes out weekly, on a Sunday morning. Occasionally, but not often, with a bonus appearance between times. Should you not have found it yet, I also post a daily photograph - now sometimes accompanied with a short descriptive paragraph of text - in a parallel Substack entitled “Whilst Out Walking … " - perhaps you would like to check it out. Usually appears timed conveniently to go with a mid-morning cup of coffee or tea.