At 4am from my bathroom window I can hear the dawn chorus
streaming from the trees around the house. One bird in particular sings a long
sweet song which seems to have no end. In my imagination this is the
nightingale from the fairy story. But not that even I imagine I am an Emperor.
And the birds begin again in the afternoon, calling from the trees and sometimes fluttering to the bird table, then veering
off at the last moment like a World War 2 bomber.They must be put off by me,
sitting writing at my black writing table.
A woman with short hair passes the gate and catches sight of me. She doesn't swerve away like the birds. She catches my eye. 'It's quite a haven here, with all these trees
in the middle of the town.' she says.
I nod. ‘Quite a haven!’
I show her the wash of bluebells, a little
blowsy now, past their best, at the bottom of the garden. ‘It’s because this is
all ancient woodland’ I explain.
‘The bluebells and the yellow aconites come and
come, again. They spread and spread. Even if you leave a patch in the
cultivated garden the bluebells sprout where they haven’t come for twenty years.'
Jasmin's Archie Among My Bluebells |
The woman nods, sharing my sense of surviving magic for a split
second. Then she tells me she’s looking at a house further along the little
road. ‘This is really quite a haven,' she says again.
She seems like a nice woman. Sounds Antipodean. She strolls off and I return to my black table and my pen and book. And I still listen to the birdsong,
more subdued now as the day moves on to a close.
This is so funny as just today I was thinking you and Dad would love this book I've found about birds which also has a little gizmo in it which allows you to hear the bird's song at the same time as looking at the picture. Spooky! It's lovely to see pictures of the garden. Makes me feel homesick. xxx
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