Bosham

I write this sitting, not in the kitchen sink, but on a tiny patio overlooking a fast flowing millstream in the Sussex village of Bosham.  Two ducks have just come by and tried to beg for food, two electric blue dragonflies are dancing over the water, sparrows are cheeping in the bushes on the other side of the stream and a breeze is taking the edge off the strength of the sunshine.  It is a beautiful spot and right now would be perfect if it were not for the machinery someone is using nearby.  Bosham sits at the top of an inlet which forms part of Chichester Harbour, itself a part of a large region of harbours stretching along the south coast with a long history of trading, industry and links with Europe and beyond.  Today it is a picturesque small village rather dominated by sailing and yachting types.

We have been enjoying the wildlife, as well as that previously mentioned there are a phenomenal number of blackbirds living in the village, I have never seen so many in a small area, this leads to lots of beautiful evening singing as they establish and defend their territories.  The birdsong is amazing, with wrens holding their own as usual.  We have even seen and heard a nightingale.

Yesterday we went to Chichester to explore, it has retained its Roman town plan so you get a real idea of the size of the military forts and fortified cities the Romans built, even the bend in the road north-south to stop the wind whistling through the city has been retained.  The city is full of gorgeous Georgian buildings, some of which combine traditional Georgian architecture with the local tradition of flint in the walls.

I have put most of my pictures into an album on flickr, I cannot currently work out how to put them in here on this tablet!  So here are the pictures

Out like a lamb

As the old saying goes, March went out like a lamb; last weekend was glorious, warm and sunny and I revelled in being able to sit outside.  I also remembered to take my camera out with me and got some lovely shots of one of the robins.  Both were about and I love their trust and curiosity.  They are starting to spend time closer together and yesterday I saw one feed the other.  While I was sitting outside last weekend I was surrounded by birdsong, every bird in the area was singing and singing, I could distinguish the robins, a wren and blackbird, but there were also blue and great tits and a surprisingly assertive dunnock around.  Normally the dunnocks we have in the garden are most inoffensive and spend their time creeping about in flower beds, but this particular individual is not afraid to boss other birds off the feeders.  Watching the birds brings me such joy, it is one of the few times I find myself smiling, broadly and spontaneously.  Anyhow, photos...










One of Dad's beloved cowslips and its red genetic variant







So next time it is beautiful weather and I am sat inside, please remind me how much joy I find outside among the birds and send me outside.

A Christmas Robin

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you have had a joyful day however you have spent it.  Our robin has been on good form today, whether he knows it is Christmas or just liked the meal worms my dad put out for him, he was around a lot and stayed in the garden while we were out there, on the feeders and on the ground, watching us and happy for us to be around.  As I have mentioned before, I love that process of building up trust and getting to know a bird like that.  My sister got a lovely couple of shots of him and I have her permission to repost them here.

When she was looking through her photos my sister did comment that the robin likes posing and I think she is right to an extent, some of it is territorial behaviour though.

Last but not least, my favourite band, Rend Collective Experiment have released a Christmas video today, a version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing that is full of energy and joy, hope you like it.

Trust

On days when it is fine enough one of my greatest pleasures is sitting out in the garden.  Over time I have found that if I am quiet and relatively still the birds who frequent the garden gradually begin to trust that I will not hurt them and start to come closer.  It will begin with a rustle in a tree or perhaps in the holly bush just to the left of the bench.  There are little twitterings, whispers and clicking sounds as they consider me and wonder if it is safe to venture to the seed feeders.  Then one adventurous soul, generally one of the robins - they are the boldest of our garden birds - will break cover for a moment, grab a piece of seed and retire with it.



The robin often loves company and will come to see what I am doing, there will be scufflings in the holly bush and a beady eye will peak out and sing softly.  Of course his favourite time of all is when my father is out gardening, he and his partner have spent entire afternoons following him around within inches, sometimes getting perilously close to the spade or fork as my father digs.  Over time I have learned to tell the two robins apart by their behaviour, for example the less bold of them hovers close to things rather than land and this robin also likes to fly across the garden narrowly avoiding my head to announce his or her presence.  Our current robin's new trick is to bring whatever he has found, small grubs, caterpillars and the like to show us, before flying off to eat them or take them to his nestlings.

The day before yesterday one of the robin even had a bath while I was standing a couple of feet away, a sign of trust that brought me such joy.  Indeed it has struck me that perhaps this is how God feels about us when we trust Him?  When we dare to approach, or show Him something we have done or just come to see what He is doing, does He feel that same joy? Is my joy at the robin's trust and company a small echo of what happens in God's heart when we come to Him and trust Him?  I do hope so.  Certainly it makes me more determined than ever to try to trust God more and to keep coming to my Father.

More of our holiday

Despite all my best intentions I did not get any more blogging done while in Sussex, so here belatedly are a few highlights of our holiday.  I may split the posts up into subjects.

First some pictures of where we were staying and the view from our dining table:



And there was a lot of visiting wildlife including a very sweet rabbit and two strutting pheasants, watching a male pheasant run makes me laugh every time, there's something most Captain Mainwaring or Mr Pooter about a male pheasant.





There were well visited bird feeders on the trees fairly close to our dining table window, we saw a robin, blue and great tits, a nut hatch, greater spotted woodpecker, magpies (alas) and chaffinches.  While I thought we had problems keeping our feeders filled, there it was a several times a week job!  My sister got some great shots of the blue tits bickering and feeding - she has more great photographs on her flickr photostream.



The farmers are delightfully welcoming and encouraged us to walk around the farm as much as we liked, an invitation we took up eagerly.  This is one of my favourite views out across their land, looking vaguely north across the Low Weald.



Most evenings there were the most wonderful sunsets, it is truly a lovely, if windy (being on top of a rise in the landscape) spot, I was so sad to have to leave.  Next time: lambs!





For those who are interested, we stayed at Heath Farm near Plumpton Green, they are comfortable, spacious cottages and the farmers are lovely people, I would definitely recommend them.  They are quite disabled friendly, being on one floor with flat access and wet rooms.

A time of firsts

I am sadly aware that I have slipped well behind with my blogging, this is mainly due to life appearing to move at a far faster pace than I can keep up with and to feeling very tired, not that I should be surprised about that, it does go with the territory.  In the meantime I have been watching an astonishing number of spring firsts emerge as the weather has finally warmed up a little.

We have had the first blossom on lots of the trees - wild and flowering cherry, plum and magnolia all out together - cherry and magnolia shown here outside our house.



The first cowslips flowering, they have taken to the garden, from the two plants put in a few years ago we now have nine in the garden, in addition to the couple we have given away.  My dad is a great advocate of the cowslip and I do love their cheery flowers, yellow is so sunshiny, although we also have the genetic rarity of a red cowslip.



The first bees emerging, I adore watching the bumble bees proceed from flower to flower.  They are nigh on impossible to photograph however.  This year there have been many flowers out awaiting them, including the lungwort, not the world's most prepossessing plant perhaps, but a hit with the bees over many weeks.  The other evening the cherry tree pictured above was abuzz with bees, such a joy to see.



The first fritillary of the year, part of the William Morris theme to the garden, fitting in with the period and style of the house.



The first days of sunshine and sitting outside, watching the birds and remaining still so that they will approach and feed while I am there.  As always the robin is first down, often coming very close in the holly bush to see what I am doing and to twitter softly and sing, but blue tits, dunnocks and even the gold finches have been joining him.  I love seeing both robins together at this time of year, one has started feeding the other with choice titbits and various birds have been spotted with nesting material.

All this has brightened a tough few weeks, with spiritual and physical struggle all ongoing.  On the knitting front (this is supposedly a knitting blog after all), I have finally finished a cardigan, but not managed to photograph it, and started a new one, double v, from an Interweave knits magazine a couple of years ago, in Vinni's Colours Nikkim, which being a cotton can be hard on the hands.  The colour is wonderful though, called peacock, it is rich and deeply saturated.  Hopefully it will not take as long to knit as the last cardigan, which I started last May.



Onwards and upwards as they say.

52 weeks of happy - week 12

It has been a bit of a miserable week, well, miserable few weeks, so all the more reason to look for the positives that have been there.  This project is helping me to see that there are good things in my life, so it is working in that respect, even if it does take quite an effort for me to keep it up.

1. Frogspawn - we have a small pond outside the back door that is able to support a community of somewhere around half a dozen frogs who appear as if from nowhere at this time of year to spawn in the pond and who can be seen on summer evenings out catching insects.  Watching the frogspawn grow is always fascinating and has become part of the cycle of the year.  With considerable diligence my sister has managed to get some good shots of the frogs and frogspawn and she has kindly allowed me to share her pictures.



2. Lunch out - at the pub with my sister, a quiet relaxed lunch and the discovery that the pub now does sweet potato chips.

3. Sock knitting - one of a pair finished, the second on the back burner while I make some swap socks.  Unfortunately I cannot share pictures of the swap socks yet, but I am pleased with them so far, it is going to be hard parting with them.  The on hold socks are Elm by Cookie.a in some sock yarn beautifully dyed by Countess Ablaze.



I also finished another pair of the baby bootees that actually stay on, though I am slightly worried that one of them looks a bit bigger than the other, hopefully they will still work to keep a baby's feet warm?  They took longer than they should have done as I cast on too few stitches on the second bootee and had to start again.



4. More bird watching - there have been a lot of them around this week because of the cold weather and they are fascinating to watch.  My sister got some photographs of them too, the robin in particular was keen to pose, they are such little attention seekers.



It is not always peace and harmony among the birds though.

52 Weeks of Happy - week 4

This week has felt like a long, hard week.  First there was the snow, which kept me in the house for days because fibromyalgia and snow do not mix, and made the days seem endless, although the rest helped a bit.  Then my mother was ill, as referred to yesterday, which has left me feeling rather shaken and a bit emotional.  All the more reason to look for my four happy things this week.

1. Goldfinches - there were eight in the garden today, males and females, this is the largest number we've seen before.  They are such pretty birds and it is thrilling to have them in the garden.  A few years' ago I started catching glimpses of goldfinches them in a garden around the corner and so they have slowly moved up the gardens.  So far the other birds seem tolerant of their presence, even the robin, who still has occasional attempts to prove that the feeder is his and his alone.  For some reason the robin seems to go for the dunnocks a lot, I suspect because they look similar to him.  My sister took this photo this morning of one of the goldfinches on the bird feeder.



2. A good book - I have been reading Slipstream, Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobiography and it is a thoroughly enjoyable read, not only because she has known some remarkable people and done remarkable things, but also because it is so well written, quite the best autobiography I can remember reading.  She has an incredible memory, wins your sympathies and is humbly honest about her mistakes.  Yet more than this, she shares the wisdom she has learnt through her life, although not in a didactic or condescending manner.  For all these reasons and more I have been finding this compelling and having the Kindle version has made it far easier to read as it is a long book (around 500 pages), but somehow manages not to feel long.  I am looking forward to getting onto her novels.

3. The perfect green - Rico Merino Essentials DK in shade 42, bought at Deramores, a shop I've never used before but who seem very efficient.

4. Miranda - whoever put this show on Monday evenings in January was a genius, it is the perfect antidote to January.

Observations in a garden, between seven and eight on a June evening

I am sitting on the old bench in the middle of the garden in the cool of the evening. Little snatches of sunshine have made their way through the tall trees to the west and are illuminating a piece of the trellis, making the bark of the wild cherry shine in a fluttering leaf-filtered light and turning a few privileged leaves of the apricot tree translucent and more intensely green.

The biggest sensation around me is the wind, first in big whooshing gushes in the taller trees, then echoed down lower in the shrubs, bushes and smaller trees of our garden. The sound is all around me, gentle, rushing and persistent, putting into sound the scritchy-scratchiness of the holly trees as the leaves scrape against one another. Most of the sound is more gentle though, a soft constant, drowning out more modern noise, lifted and enlarged by bigger gusts, varied with sudden stillnesses when only the slightest breeze travels lightly across my hands and around my body.



The tall trees are like illuminated green tents, formed by leaves caught in evening sunlight, full of life. Around them insects dance and birds fly to and fro chirruping to one another. One young bird cries persistently, as though searching for his parents, or wishing to affirm his own identity.

This is the hour when often a blackbird will sit on an ariel above a neighbour's roof, or perhaps on a convenient chimney pot, singing to all the world, but tonight he is elsewhere. Often when I sit here I am aware of the birds around me, even if I cannot see them, hearing the little scufflings and hoppings and twitterings as they go about through the trees and bushes and fences around me, communicating with one another in a constant game of, "Where are you?" "I am here, where are you?". Occasionally a bold fellow, usually the robin, will come closer to see who or what I am and what I am doing in his territory, sometimes lingering to look over my shoulder and hovering near.

If you sit still for long enough you can be rewarded by the birds coming down to the seed feeder as though you are not there, scuttling in for a piece of sunflower seed before carrying their prize into the wild cherry or holly trees to peck it into submission.

My fingers are cold now but I have no wish to go in, the evening is so perfect, the sky so blue after so much grey and rain and I can smell the already dampening grass beneath my feet, speckled with clover flowers. In between the wind bears towards me the scent of the roses and honeysuckle, both blooming profusely and other scents whose origins are foreign to me. The wind ruffles my back and I watch the golden green leaves of the biggest of the trees fluttering too and fro, the branches pitching and tossing like the sea.






The adult robin comes onto the trellis, looks around the garden to check all is well, flutters to the fence and speeds off between the houses. Leaf shadows show like puppets across pots, plants and bows and a bumble bee, out late, investigates a likely looking nasturtium, crawling bodily into the heart of the flower. A snatch of song comes through the wind, comes closer and the conversation continues across the gardens, but I must leave the garden to its true owners, it is only ever on loan to me, and go in and attend to supper.


(As written except for corrections to typing and spelling errors, 30th June 2012.  Photographs from other occasions)

WIP Wednesday

I've remembered to post on the right day this week, which is a start.  I'm currently recovering from doing a lot of cooking in preparation for my sister's birthday, which was this Sunday, everything went down well including making a proper (non-packet) jelly for the first time ever - and mercifully it did set!



Meanwhile I'm still ploughing through my Pomme de Pin cardigan, it's now at seven and a half inches long, only ten and a half left to go, although I will try it up against myself as it gets longer to check it doesn't become too long, as I'm not especially tall.  Luckily I'm still enjoying knitting with the alpaca and getting the hang of the lace pattern and I can just about knit it in front of the television.



The improved weather has been such a relief and has provided lots of opportunities for watching the fledgling birds on the bird feeders, especially a whole group of great tits who spend hours on the feeders and a beautiful juvenile robin, who is yet quite to get the hang of the feeders.  I managed to get some photographs of the birds, by sitting very still in the garden holding the camera focused on the feeders and clicking away, although the slightest movement sent them flying for cover.  The juvenile robin, however, was most interested in what I was doing in the garden and spent a lot of time looking at me from the safety of the holly bush and chirruping away.  I do enjoy watching the birds and I'd recommend it, especially if you aren't well as it is a low energy, very cheering occupation.