I long for a red squirrel or a fawn, a pine martin or an otter. Even a hedgehog would be a delight. Some hope. Here in this small urban garden, I must content myself with what I have, or perhaps I should say, with what I can see.
The woodpecker was early this year, jabbing away at a neighbour’s towering sycamore from the last week in January. Same spot on the same tree trunk every year, but I don’t know if it is the same bird; I only assume that it is.
Perhaps I just want it to be the same bird. Whether it is marking its territory or extracting its lunch of insects from the bark, the furious hammering can be heard from one end of the terrace to the other. As an alarm call, it is loud enough though somewhat unreliable.
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This morning, he was at it before dawn. There are no binoculars in the house, but I can see he is a dapper little chap from the top floor. A pulsating shock of green, black and white, his plumage seems almost too bright and dazzling for a British garden. He is just one of the many welcome visitors to this garden.
The small birds are truly appreciated. There are more robins than any other winged visitor, or perhaps their flash of scarlet means I notice them more. Blue tits bounce around like kids on Christmas morning, darting in and out of the jasmine. They like to jump through the arty holes in the fence finials. Wrens, plentiful in this garden, are so small I sometimes mistake them for mice. They dart back and forth, usually in pairs, clearly having the time of their lives.
I wish I could celebrate the pigeons in the same way, but I can’t. They stroll around the garden like portly members of a gentleman’s club, almost too well fed to fly. Their appetite is one of the reasons this garden is no longer predominantly home to fruit and vegetables. In its last incarnation as a glorified allotment, pigeons pecked at everything they passed on their early morning waddle. These scavengers are not even the sort of pigeons I would relish in a pie.
Recently, someone has been picking my primroses. Despite a hat of wire mesh, the buds are nibbled away at the first hint of canary yellow among the green leaves. I wish I could celebrate the pigeons, but I can’t. They stroll around the garden like portly members of a gentleman’s club. The blame initially went to the pigeons, but now I am not so sure. Mice are the more likely culprits.
My largest visitor is the fox. The current one, a male who actually lives next door but comes over to my place to picnic and poo, is handsome, regal even, with his ginger, rust and white livery. He surveys the garden with pride and takes no notice of my suggestion he might like to go elsewhere. As I run up the garden, flapping a tea towel in his face, he just looks at me with pity. Even a full-on screaming rush in his direction does little to stir him. This is clearly as much his territory as mine. Was it the fox who left torn pigeon wings over the newly mulched beds the other day?
And I have only myself to blame for the squirrels. They are fun to watch, and here in such quantity because of the many trees I have planted during my tenure. What was a flat, tree-less space is now a living, breathing climbing frame. They fly from branch to branch, perfecting their parkour; from fig to medlar, medlar to greengage and then on to the robinia, crab apple and apple. They thank me by picking my strawberries, digging up and stealing my bulbs and snapping the tips from my tulips – not to eat, but apparently just for the hell of it. They are the naughty children of this garden, the sort who play knock-down-ginger and tip over your bins, laughing as they go. It wouldn’t be the same without them, though I might have a few more narcissi.
This garden lacks water, so it is bereft of dragonflies, newts and the myriad creatures of the not-so-deep. I can’t have everything. It does, however, do very well as a home to moths and butterflies.
On cool summer days, the azure confetti of the common blue is a daily joy. But it’s the afternoon visits of painted ladies I look forward to most, resting demurely on the apricot petals of Rosa Lady Emma Hamilton, or, once, almost disappearing into the pile of a similarly orange-and- tan Persian carpet I had draped over the back of a garden bench.
I would like more butterflies. This spring’s back-of-an-envelope plans include many more plants I feel they might enjoy. Single- flowered and fragrant mostly, so I will get more bees too. Bees do love a nasturtium. In late spring, they work the honeysuckle and the foxgloves, while in deepest summer their buzzing is almost perpetual as they go from rose to rose.
It is in early spring I need them most, to hover from greengage and plum and apple blossom, doing their crucial work. I planted the crocuses and narcissi to tempt them from their slumbers, and lure them toward the fruit trees’ blossom.
Last spring, damp and cold, no amount of orange crocuses could get them out of bed. My fruit trees produced little. A warm and early spring will mean I will be picking gages and pears in a few months’ time.
I’ve always felt my garden guests are – whisper it – rather ‘ordinary’. I have a fancy to see a stoat on my footpath. Perhaps I speak too soon. A pair of parakeets, in a flurry of lime, salmon and emerald, are currently making a hell of a row in the elder tree. A dashing vision, gaudy and fun; a flying carnival, yet I still hope it’s a fleeting one.
A friend up the road in Hampstead reckons they screech like banshees and can strip the buds of her magnolia in the time it takes her to get the binoculars out. Maybe I’ll stick to my fox.
