Garden visitors

At the weekend, I experienced one of those perfect moments, a timely reminder of how lucky we are to enjoy our new simple life. It was early morning, still very quiet and the sun was shining. I sat outside, eating toast with home-made plum jam, sipping on fresh coffee and sharing the patio table with the Calamity Cat, who was stretched out sunbathing. It was a moment to breathe, to feel fully in the moment, and I was making the most of it. Slowly, I became aware of a background noise – not the usual distant rumble of the A59, but a constant buzzing around ground level. The herb garden is next to the patio, so that we can collect the herbs easily and so that we can enjoy the scents that surround us as we brush past it – mint, lemon, rosemary and even the occasional whiff of Indian food from the curry plant. I have said before that the herb garden is a cut-throat world and it is again getting out of hand. The mints, always the chief culprits in their bid to take over the whole patch, are in flower and, along with the oregano, are trailing over the edge of the path. I have been planning to cut it all back to regain control but, as I realised on that beautiful Saturday morning, the pruning will have to wait. The bees, the butterflies and a variety of other pollinating insects are all absolutely loving it. And I love to hear the buzz as these creatures go about their business. There were literally dozens of them that morning and, every time I go out to gather some herbs for dinner, I disturb a cloud of flying visitors. Along with our revitalised buddleia and the petunias in our pallet planter, we are definitely doing our bit for pollinators. Even more exciting, we have several holes in our bug house up in the orchard plugged with leaves, which is usually a sign of solitary bees nesting within.

We have a range of other visitors. We rescue the odd frog from the garage (goodness knows how they end up in there but I have a feeling they too hang out in the shelter of the nearby herb garden, probably snacking on my insects) and one has happily taken up residence in our veg patch, helping to control the slugs and other creatures all too happy to dine on our hard work. I’m not sure who is the more shocked when we disturb it when we are watering – it leaps out of the potato plants and watches us from the edge of the raised bed until we have finished. The slugs and snails are far less in evidence than they were last year – hopefully the nematodes we apply every six weeks, along with the frogs, are keeping them at bay. I did find a snail in the petunias the other day, half way up the house wall – it was clearly going for a snail mountaineering award. It reminded me of my first holiday abroad as a child, when one of my sisters plucked snails from a wall and then frantically tried to stick them back on again because she thought she would get into trouble for playing with them. In this instance, I relocated the adventurer to the hedge, where it could do less damage.

The sparrows, fledged in the hedges this year in spite of the cats’ best efforts to reduce their numbers, are all grown up now and moving on, as are the starlings who nested in our eaves. The pigeons are as prevalent as ever, either roosting in the apple tree or feeding on our newly-planted onions (D has our veg on a very efficient conveyor belt and, as fast as we eat one planting, more are starting life in the greenhouse or being planted out to keep up us going later in the year). We often see the swallows swirling around in the sky above as we spend our evenings with a glass of wine in front of the chiminea and there was even an evening where I was buzzed by a bat as I went looking for the Calamity Cat.

The cats are spending long hours outside as if they know that very soon, the evenings will be drawing in, the weather will grow colder and they will be coming in earlier, so they need to take advantage now while they can. Calamity, usually the more home-loving of the two, is particularly reluctant to come in and sits under the hedge, just out of reach, steadfastly ignoring our pleas. She will sit there for most of the evening, lulling us into a false sense of security and then vanishing just as the time is growing late and we want her to return home. She is usually tempted out from wherever she is hiding – never far – by Dreamies, but she is becoming very skilled at taking them and the retreating at speed before we can catch her. The Princess is oddly far happier to come home, usually asking to come in around 7pm for a snack, before she quietly puts herself to bed upstairs.

It was with mixed feelings yesterday that we saw our first robin of the season, heralding the autumn and winter to come. It won’t be long before we will be lighting the fire again and snuggling down in front of it as we feel the summer slowly drawing to a close.