My Winter Garden

Laura says my garden is a fairy garden, but at the moment it looks as though Hivere, the Winter Giant has stomped all over it! The archway with the clematis on has collapsed so that only the Little People can actually get to it.

There area few bright spots where Ettienne the Goddess of Summer is fighting back, the daffodils and bluebells are starting to shoot. The cyclamen have little buds peeping from under their leaves and the Kaffir lillies, Mahonia and Elephants Ears are bravely flowering on, although I think the snow may have finished the pink Kaffir lillies.

But the thing I love best about the garden at this time of year are the birds. I don't care how many plants are flowering or have leaves and stems with 'winter interest' if there is no movement, no sudden fluttering from branch to branch, no singing and chattering over the feeders and roosting sites the garden is dead.

I have one seed feeder in the cherry tree in the front which is dominated by flocks of sparrows. A blackbird lurks around the lower branches to catch anything which is dropped. I also scatter seed and berries collected in the autumn and kept in the freezer and when it is really cold I throw out some mealworms aswell. There is also a cheeky little robin who visits aswell and some bluetits and chaffinch.

The ash tree provides a roosting place for a collection of 'blackbirds', with the jackdaws at the lower levels and the larger crows and rooks higher up. The ivy covering the trunk provides roosting/nesting places for the sparrows and robin.

There was a time a couple of years ago when I thought that the sparrows had pushed the bluetits out of my garden, but they seem to have come to some agreement because the seed feeder and the peanut feeder on the collapsed arch in the back is dominated by bluetits who line up in the willow tree at the end of the garden and swoop across to take their turn, with the occaisional greattit, coaltit,chaffinch and starling.

There is also a thrush who visits my garden, although I rarely see him, only the empty snail shells by the stone he uses as an anvil.