Blue tits are very small, very neat, very busy.

I’m still at my Dad’s house, sitting in the living room.  There is a bird feeder just outside the window and a moment ago a nuthatch was eating the nuts.  They are very neat too, in a different way to blue tits.  They are sleek, with not a feather out of place.  The same cannot be said of blue tits, who often arrive with very scruffy feathers on top of their heads.  Almost Mohican.  I’m sure it’s deliberate.

They are astonishingly beautiful.  Delicate.  Acrobatic.  So, so busy.

It seems odd to start writing about my garden when I am not there.  But this is not just about my garden, it is about gardens everywhere.  And wherever I am there is a garden.  My definition of a garden is ‘the space around the house’.  As simple as that.

Now there is a bullfinch on the rose bush which supports  the other bird feeder.  Exceptionally handsome, a Lord Mayor of birds.  He seems to know, and be rather proud!

Blackbirds bounce about the lawn, three of them, and just now I counted ten blue tits, and two great tits.  There are sparrows too, and now and then a greenfinch.  Yesterday I saw a siskin and earlier this morning a greater spotted woodpecker was feeding.  His rump is so red, much redder than the red breast of the robin, which is really orange.

The only human activity in this garden is the filling of the bird feeders and in the summer the occasional cutting of the lawn.  No weeding or pruning is done at all.  Some of the decorative plants survive, some do not.  The only flowers I can see are a clump of snowdrops under the tangled branches of a forsythia bush.  A moment ago there was a chaffinch near them, and now there is a dunnock.

Suddenly there are four robins.  That is likely to cause trouble.  Robins are very territorial, and sure enough they are chasing each other about.  I imagine this is a very sought after territory, often contested.  It is hard to say who is the resident and who is the usurper, but only one pair will remain.

Now here is a bird to take my breath away.  A long tailed tit.  Their bodies are smaller than the blue tit, but their tails are twice as long.  When they build a nest it is a ball of fluff and moss and feathers with such a tiny entrance they have to fold their tail over their head to get in.

This is a beautiful garden, yet if I describe it in terms of plants that might not be understood.  Near me, just outside the window there is an almost dead rosemary bush with the light brown remains of last year’s couch grass matted through it.  A branch of a lilac bush, with its already swelling pairs of light green buds, is poking out of ramble of brambles.  Then the forsythia, at present holding its own against the brambles.  There is a tall yet limp conifer, probably a Leyland cypress, and another conifer, Chamaecyparis pisifera Boulevard, a hangover from the days when dwarf conifers were so fashionable and now grown thin and tall and – I almost say ugly, and from a decorative gardener’s point of view it is – but to the birds it means safety.  There is a hebe creeping across the lawn; there is a Rose bush, Rosa glauca, the one which supports the other bird feeder and in the summer has small blueish leaves and rather dull flowers.  Near the kitchen door there is an overgrown Euonynous with bright yellow leaves splashed with green.

And there are birds.  Birds everywhere.

This is a beautiful garden.