The sunlounger as viewed from the allotment
Or a wallow in the mire… Look away now if misery memoirs aren’t your thing… (Normal service will be resumed…)
I shift uncomfortably on the allotment sunlounger in the unremitting dry heat of early June, and worry about the baby birds that may be dying in their nests all around this parched green patch. Of starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion. Victims of this silent spring.
This is the first year I can remember when the solitary bees have not made their homes between the wooden planks of the allotment shed. There are only a few bumblebees and hoverflies feasting on the comfrey and purple tansy under the apple tree.
Bees on the purple tansy
Next door one way don’t look after their pond and the side channels have dried up and the main area is choked in pond weed, despite my efforts to keep it clean(ish). The multitudinous tadpoles have vanished – whether they have fallen prey to the heron or to cannibalism or have died off for another reason is unknown.
The first sowings of vegetable seeds didn’t take due to the cold, late spring, and now, although the second lot did germinate, they are struggling to survive in the heat (although the four strawberries tasted as succulent as they look).
As delicious as they look
The water butt is empty and I too am struggling – to walk the few yards to the communal tap – due to a back/hip issue that is making walking incredibly painful and slow and has thus stopped me going on a holiday I have looked forward to for four years. Mingling with fellow birdwatchers, learning, going on guided walks, three hearty meals a day… all in what looked and sounded like lovely surroundings.
So I have done what I always do: retreated into myself and wallowed in the depths of despair. Easy to do that when you’re on your own, and difficult to ‘rise above’. Yet the thought of the allotment and its birds has gently galvanised me this morning. The plot holder who is watering the plants and re-filling the feeders and bird bath this week won’t know to put the suet on the fence posts for the robins and blackbird, and I forgot to mention the wildflower patch and the apple tree, so I force myself out to lurch around the plot like a tempest-tossed ship.
Purple tansy, comfrey and brambles under the apple tree
My reward is the birdlife, as it always is. Although the friendly robin hasn’t visited for a while and I am trying not to worry about what this might mean, the second one is here and I think she is pleased to see the suet – the male blackbird certainly is.
Feeders filled, water changed, drooping seedlings re-watered, I settle in the shade of the other neighbour’s apple and pear trees, listen to the blackbird singing, and watch as around 12 magpies – thinking that the coast is now clear – descend on the dying cherry tree for what food isn’t in squirrel-proof feeders.
Suddenly, one of the crow pair flies in like a dark avenger, scattering the two-tone chattering classes from their perches, then swooping up to land on the very top branch. It’s easy to anthropomorphise this bird, to imagine a smug smirk on its face and a swagger in its swoop, as it does seem to take real pleasure in its self-appointed task. The magpies are undaunted, though, and, once their one-tone relative has left, a couple of advance guards return to stalk across the slate slab that serves as a table, and worry at the peanut feeder. Teaching tenacity through life’s trials and tribulations – a lesson for us all.
The allotment as viewed from the sunlounger
Later, I look up the ‘One for Sorrow’ rhyme, knowing that it goes up to 10 but wondering if it ventures any further, and find:
“Eleven for health
Twelve for wealth
Thirteen beware it’s the devil himself”
(https://www.birdspot.co.uk/culture/one-for-sorrow-magpie-nursery-rhyme)
Hmmm, hopefully there were actually only 11 of them…