You folks are just going to have to get used to seeing a lot of my little garden for a while, for obvious reasons. Here it is, the whole thing excluding the pile of junk I need to deal with this summer, just out of sight by those bricks
the neighbor gave us when he re-did his patio. They’re destined to be a patio of our own, and, if there are enough, also a barbecue/pizza oven. By Dutch standards our garden is huge, by American standards tiny… I’m just very grateful to have one at all. Right now it is, like so much else, dichotomous out there. On the one hand, it’s in a state of extreme neglect, not only because we’re just coming out of winter but also because last spring and summer I was in the full throes of the worst phases of this burnout and in physical therapy for my back issues, so I just didn’t end up getting a lot done. On the other hand, the work I’ve done to transform the original wildly-unkemptly-bordered plain of ugly gravel tiles into a semi-self-sustaining agglomeration of pleasant, native, hardy, and above all bee-friendly plants has paid off and it’s starting to green up for the spring.
It might look like a lovely view, and it is, I’m not disputing that, but it’s still a raw issue for me. Behind that fence at the end is an alleyway. Until a few months ago, the garden on the other side of that alley was a 100+-year-old stand of juniper trees, which supported a murmuring of starlings whose serenades made my evenings beautiful and whose antics entertained me all day long. Blackbirds, doves, sparrows, magpies… all the local
birds used it as a sheltering or nesting place. It rendered my garden beautifully private for much of its length and it blocked the wind. Then one day, only a few months ago, some people showed up and just... ripped it all out. One entire day of falling trees, fleeing flocks of birds, noise. I stood in my window crying the whole time, unable to believe that they weren’t going to leave some of it, any of it, not even a paltry privacy strip at the end of the yard. And then it was done and now there is just mud there, full of stumps. They chipped it all; not even a stick or twig remained for me to make a commemorative walking stick or wand from. For weeks I found dead endangered salamanders in the back alley, for weeks the starlings came by day after day to see whether their homeland had returned. And now the house over there sits empty and my view goes all the way through to where the dump trucks and city buses chug by. The music of my murmuring is gone. In a day or two I’m going to line the top of my fence with wire so that the wisteria and passionflower will cover it and then, at least in summer, whoever lives there (if anyone ever does) won’t be able to stare from their living room straight into mine.
A lot of the things in my garden, I found. People regularly make appointments with the city for larger rubbish and they’ll put out plant pots, decorative items, furniture. A year or so ago a couple moved out from the end of the street and left this magnificently clever thing behind! I couldn't leave that out there to be trashed. Look at it! It isn’t all that pretty now but I intend to paint it like the Yellow Submarine at some point. Meanwhile those nasturtiums and snapdragons are loving it so much they even survived winter.
What to do with all those pesky excess marbles? These guys have been out here constituting a summertime bee waterer for quite some time, and I thought this globe I found looked nice in it. I don’t mind at all that it’s being colonized by bloody dock. My bloody dock was, interestingly, briefly colonized by beautiful vividly striped beetles which
came from a rosemary plant thrown away by a museum in Amsterdam.
Here are some more of those decorative globes I found when someone upgraded their own garden décor. I love what’s happening this year with the front one!
I’ve made sure my garden is not only bee friendly but bird friendly as well. There’s a flock of sparrows which live in my eaves, honeysuckle, and assorted shrubberies, and they’re very entertaining. I’ve been learning a lot about them; they’re matriarchal, for example, and all the males are expected to defend the colony and collect food and
nesting material and so on, but the top females select who gets to mate. There’s also a family of turtle doves which visit and aren’t much bothered about me anymore, and my jackdaws started coming by a couple of years ago when they figured out where I live. As we get into summer and I spend a lot more time just sitting out there reading and such, they’ll start dropping in just to hang out quietly near me, and I’ll introduce you to more of them by name.
There was a pair of blackbirds, for years, until they cut those trees out. Now there’s one that’s been around singing lately, and I saw a female the other day, so I’d guess a new pair has secured the territory. This is a feeder I
made for the jackdaws and magpies, but the turtle doves kind of dominate it; I’ll add a second one over by my reading nook soon and that’ll take the pressure off and double the photographic options.
I found this pot on the street once. It’s missing a handle and has a crack but it’s so pretty I incorporated it out in the garden as a toad shelter. I have several scattered around now. At a certain time of year the male toads go walkabout, looking for females, and they can get themselves into trouble
if they get caught out in the sun or can’t find sufficient nighttime cover, so I’ve made sure my garden allows them free and safe passage.
I know that I’m very lucky to have a tiny oasis that’s really my own. It’s still a city, I can always hear other people and traffic and, in season, the race track, and we live near a major airport so under normal circumstances the air is never free of trails or the rumbling of jet engines, but it’s peaceful, and it’s full of life.
Happy Spring, everyone; may this season bring the best it can to us all!
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Love your garden and your writing, Katrina! So glad you've made this blog.