wildlife in the garden

Ordinary domestic gardens are one of the most significant conservation habitats in this country.  Wildlife does not need us to do anything special, it just wants us to carry on, perhaps doing a trifle less.

A few weeks ago, while browsing in the RHS library at Harlow Carr I came across a book, read the book, and made no mental note of title or author.  It described some results of the BUGS survey in Sheffield beginning about fifteen years ago.  It surveyed methods and finds, it looked at what worked and assessed the devices it was suggested that gardeners might add to the garden to improve them as a habitat for wildlife.  Short and interesting.  It makes the obvious point, a point that is not obvious as we look out of our window onto our garden, that as far as wildlife is concerned all the gardens available are its territory.  It could have gone on to say that a fence might only be significant as a food source for insects when in decay, with the insects a food source for one another and other animals; or a wall as providing nesting sites for bees and wasps as the mortar decayed.

By working the garden we create a range of mini-habitats, we cultivate (in both senses) a variety of plants offering flowers at different seasons, leaves, fruits and seeds.  What we do not do is more significant that what we do, the patches left to wildflowers and to nettles, dead wood left to decay, dead animals left to decay, heaps of vegetable matter in compost heaps, ponds, walls and rockeries with holes in them, leaves not swept up, and grass cuttings left in place.  The extras that we add almost irrelevant – beehouses and nest boxes uninhabited while the beasts find their own homes.  In the prologue to ‘A Sting in the Tale’ by Dave Goulson, a book just started, the author details building bee nesting sites into rockeries to be ignored by bees choosing a site under an old hut.  Bird feeders and sections of bamboo have value.

I looked into the two monographs by Jennifer Owen on her study of her garden in Leicester over thirty years.  More details than I needed. Then found her short book ‘Garden Life’ from 1983, and am part way through that.

Already I am looking closer.  She describes the work of the holly leaf miner. Eggs laid by the midrib, the larvae burrow through the soft cells between the waxy layers creating blisters in the skine of the leaf.  The larvae, or the pupae may be parasitised by parasitoid wasps, and no matter what the insect, tree sparrows could peck out the blisters in early spring to feed on the occupants.  So I went out to look at our two hollies – and there on the leaves the tell tale blisters, and on quite a lot the tears that showed tree sparrows had reaped their harvest.  This morning, while walking the dogs in Church Wood, between the Beckett Park campus and the grounds of St Chads church, I looked at the hollies that grow so plentifully beneath the beeches.  Here too was the leaf miner evidence, although these more often showed clear tunnels running off from the main blister – and none showed any evidence of sparrow attack.

And I have started the Goulson book on bumblebees, garden overlapping with conservation again. the prologue while acknowledging the magic of ‘My Family and other Animals’ provides a contrast – a bloodier world of violence and failure to compare with idyll. A bit like comparing the flocks in Daudet and Giono, or moderating ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with the view from ‘Fanny Hill’.

 

Sound and sense in writing

A while ago, when I started this strand I referred positively to my impression of Jeffrey Deaver, and in particular his comment on Frost saying that someone who could not distinguish the words of one of his poems ought to be able to understand its concern just from the sound of the words. Presumably concrete poetry would say similar. Deaver went on to say that he sought to emulate that in his writing.

I had not then read any of his books.  I have since read three and given up on a fourth when I sensed repetition.  Of course I would have to have read it to judge it fairly.  They read easily enough, but although I tried to test the sound/sense at some points was not sure that I could.

Of course the suggestion is not novel.  Auden in an essay on George Herbert used as an introduction to the Penguin selected poems discusses the musicality and meaning in the poems.

But while reflecting, during my usual promenade in the woods with the dogs, another example recurred to me.  I had noticed it when I read the Daudet and filed it away.  In the Alps there is a process of transhumance – shepherds gather their flocks at the end of winter and take them to the upland pastures, living in remote huts, before returning to the lowlands at the end of summer.

The beginning of ‘Le Grand Troupeau’ by Jean Giono describes the descent from the hills, the murmuring of the towns people creates a sense of dread or uncertainty; the flock appears suddenly with wild shepherds descending like ragged prophets, dragging a sense of doom; the sheep are torn and ragged, bloodied and afraid.  And thus the country is dragged into World War.

In his reflective calm stories collected in ‘Lettres de mon Moulin’  Alphonse Daudet also describes the passing of the flocks.  The shepherds are guardians, the tone is pastoral (Virgilian perhaps), all is ordered and processional.  The tradition carries on and is celebrated.

In both these cases the sound read aloud reflects the mood: Wagner and Vaughan Williams.