‘Darling, it was boiling!’
I know this, of course. I know that temperatures reached 32°C for 15 consecutive days across much of southern England, peaking at 35.9ºC. I know some regions had no rain for 45 days straight. In some parts of the country they ran out of drinking water and had to use a standpipe at the end of the road. I know that everyone was encouraged to water their gardens with bath water, that many were bitten by a ‘plague’ of ladybirds.
‘The world didn’t end,’ everyone says.
I ask them if they know that most butterfly populations crashed in 1977, thanks to the drought the year before. That it took the common species 10 years to build their numbers back up but that rarer, more specialist butterflies have never recovered, thanks, of course, to the combined assault of habitat loss. They fall quiet. Of course, no one thinks of climate affecting other species. They didn’t notice.
They didn’t notice that plants didn’t flower, that leaves shrivelled up and grass crunched underfoot like fresh snow. They didn’t notice that the hedgehogs starved, that birds were abandoned in their nests, that frogs died of desiccation. In 1976 the heat generated masses of aphids, which boosted ladybird populations but then at the end of summer, the ladybirds went hungry and started biting people in huge, locust-like flocks. It was this that made the papers.
‘What was 1976 like, Mum?’
‘I was my sister’s bridesmaid,’ she says.
I can’t bear it. I can’t look after the garden, I don’t have enough water to keep it going. I’m sick of taking my miserable washing-up bowl of manky water to see which plant is most deserving of it, which is more wilting and shrivelled than the next. The leaves are scorching, the flowers just aren’t appearing. How did I get to the age of 41 and not realise that some plants just don’t produce flowers in a drought? Lots of drought-stressed plants flower quickly and then bolt (run to seed), which seems more of a sensible path, in terms of attempting another generation. But refusing to bloom entirely? Lamb’s ear, no flowers; ruddy clover, no flowers; penstemon, no flowers. The bumblebees emerge earlier and earlier each day, trying to survive, but the pavements are littered with the dead. Butterflies, which I suspect have flocked into our gardens to escape the wider countryside suggest a greater abundance than there really is. There have been ringlets and meadow browns this summer – two records for the garden but probably for all the wrong reasons. I find two batches of large white butterfly eggs on the tattiest, most mildewed charlock, which had self-seeded next to the ‘pond’ and then bolted. Friends on Twitter post of similar apparently desperate attempts, of butterflies laying eggs on already dried-up plants seemingly because they had no choice but to. I collect the large whites and keep them in my little mesh cage with a handful of cauliflower leaves my neighbour Kate gave me. (I hope they don’t mind sharing the space with the dead frog I am drying out, which Kate also gave me.)
As the shade descends I do a stupid thing, which is to say I attempt to garden. I need to do something. On a whim, I decide I no longer like the Kilmarnock willow that sits at the far end of the pond, and whose drought-stressed leaves are dropping into the empty pool as if it, too, dreams of autumn. I saw its head off, which I stuff into the gap between the shed and the garden wall, and then dig up its roots, adding its long, bent stem to the log pile. I feel bad for chopping down a ‘tree’, but it was on its way out anyway and it was taking up so much space that could be used to grow other things. Its carbon will remain locked away in its stem and branches for many years, and there will be more growing in its place, of course.
I dig the soil, which isn’t as big a challenge as I thought it would be – the shade cast by the umbrella of Kilmarnock branches will have protected it from the sun’s baking rays. I rake it over a bit, but not enough to make it level and certainly not enough to remove ‘weeds’, and then take my spade to the front garden and start digging things up: agapanthus, ruddy clover, lamb’s ear (they definitely won’t flower now), lavender. I hoof salvias and geums out of pots and rescue a privet-leaved ageratina (Eupatorium ligustrinum) from the clutches of black horehound – both of which have seen better days. I carry everything through the house to the back, tangled roots scraping against white walls and clods of earth falling on to varnished wood. I’ll never learn. There are pots of buddleia and scabious left over from a photoshoot, which I commandeer also. I arrange the plants in order of height as they are now, and then again where I anticipate how they will be in the future. I space them evenly but probably too close together, as I always do. I plant them, one by one, with no compost or other food in the planting hole, no moist soil, no teasing of roots. I firm them in, fluff around the edges, shift a couple of things around that I planted and then didn’t like. I deadhead the lavender, salvias and geums, as they’ll need to divert that energy to repair the roots I just damaged as I pulled them out of bone-dry soil. I fetch my half-full washing-up bowl and pour grey water over two plants, and wish the rest good luck.
Why am I doing this today of all days? Why must I do this now? Emma comes home to a woman possessed, a woman on a mission, who can’t sit still and has to be busy. To mud-scraped walls in the hallway and clods of earth on varnished wood. It can’t be nice for her, coming home to this. She sits me down and hands me a beer. She’s absolutely loving the sunshine but daren’t tell me as she knows it’s destroying me, while I try (badly) to keep the worst of my anxiety from her. ‘Shall I bathe the dog?’ she asks, gently. ‘You can use the water on the garden.’
The aim of the new border, while created on a whim on the hottest day the country has ever seen, is to establish a continuous display that spans the length of the garden, from the patio to the shed. Before, the border went as far as just beyond the bench and then dropped off, as the soil space that curves around the far edge of the pond, next to the wall, is so small and dry that very little grows there. Then there was the Kilmarnock willow, which looked alright for a couple of years but soon outgrew its space to the point that it became a giant green boulder that sat in the way of nice flowery things and drew your eye straight to it as a lump in front of the shed. Now, freshly bedded in with Tosca’s dirty bath water, the border will sweep around the pond and create depth and interest and all the things garden designers talk about when putting things together. There will be a succession of flowers from March to December, there will be different heights, there will be plants in the narrow space between pond and wall (I haven’t worked out what yet, and the soil is too dry to attempt planting), there will be colour. And oh, can I not just have something new?
It’s a bit mad, though, to have done this today. But I am mad, I am frantic and anxious and not thinking straight and my god will it just rain? I try to persuade Emma to eat cold bolognaise for tea and she pulls a face that says absolutely not, and so we eat it, warmed, while watching the news, while watching fire after fire, scorched earth, unsafe houses, terrified firefighters. Afterwards, as the day fades, I sit on the bench with the garden. My rain app tells me rain will start in 15 minutes but it won’t, will it? The garden stills and rustles, the rain cloud moves over me but it doesn’t rain. It’s too hot to rain, the water is evaporating before it can leave the sky. I stare at shrivelled plants taking a breather as the temperature cools. Please, please, can we just have some rain?
Wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum
The wool carder is an angry little bee, chunky and black with wasp-like yellow bands or spots on its abdomen. The male has a set of spikes at the tip of his body to fight with other males, but also to ward off butterflies, bumblebees and giant dragonflies from his territory. Once, I had one nesting in my bee hotel and I kept its precious cocoons so I could sit with them as the new bees hatched out the following year. They emerged in a frenzy of angry buzzing, the cocoons spinning around before the bees chewed their way out and headed straight to the window to be free. If wool carder bees were human they would be short and stocky with a broken nose and a black eye, permanently wearing boxing gloves. ‘C’mon then! C’mon!’
The females ‘card’ hairs from hairy-leaved plants to knit a woolly sock, into which they lay the eggs of next year’s angry boys. They favour lamb’s ear, which is easy to grow and should be in every garden. The males install themselves at patches of lamb’s ear and claim it as their own, so they can be ready for passing females checking the territory. They also favour bird’s foot trefoil – indeed the year they nested with me was the only year I’ve had masses of it, which was draped, like curtains, around the pond (bird’s foot trefoil has a habit of disappearing, which is annoying). Every day I would fish wool carder males from the pond which, I suspect, had been pushed in by others. I took one dead individual into the house to dry off, for my nature table, and it came back to life some hours later.
If a wool carder bee nests in your bee hotel you have reached the Holy Grail of bee hoteling because they so very rarely nest in them. Some suggest the hotel should be placed high up, that you need a ladder to fix it to your wall. But mine nested at head height and the following year, although laying only two eggs, a wool carder nested just one metre from the ground.
To attract them to your garden grow lamb’s ear so the females can make their woolly sock nests, and grow bird’s foot trefoil so the males can fight over it. You might not get them nesting in your bee hotel but you will get the best spectacle a bee lover can imagine – angry bees fighting over flowers and knitting woolly socks. Tell me, what is there not to love?
August
Back in the day, as a ‘jobbing’ journalist, I would attend trade shows and meet people who would try to flog me things or, worse, try to get me to write about the things they wanted to flog in the magazine. My shoulders would ache with the weight of leaflets and I would come away with free things I didn’t need or want – sometimes really odd things that I would use for years before finally accepting that I didn’t like them. Sometimes I would get really good things like a tool sharpener or a great pair of scissors. Always I would ask difficult questions, such as the time I asked a company why they were launching a butterfly ‘throw and grow’ mix with peat-based compost. Peat bogs are vital carbon sinks that lock away carbon and are essential to minimise global heating – globally, they hold more than twice as much carbon as the world’s forests do. But they also provide a home for lots of species of wildlife, including now-rare butterflies. Couldn’t they see, at the very least, that they were stealing from rare butterflies to create food for common ones? Everyone else flocked to get their hands on a free sample of quite average flowers that would bloom and then disappear in one season, during which time they would, perhaps, attract butterflies while their rarer cousins died and more greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere, and I would stand there, resolute, refusing to be greenwashed. Harumph.
All of these events merge into one, but there are two occasions that are burned into my brain for ever: watching the slug pellet marketer eat slug pellets to ‘prove’ how wildlife-friendly they are (instead of using, I don’t know, science), and the woman from the water butt company who told me that people only install water butts in summer, when it’s dry. ‘They should install them in autumn, when it’s wet,’ she said, ‘and then they wouldn’t run out of water in summer.’ If only she knew I think about her every day.
When I redid the garden I installed one water butt. An expensive one, it’s attached to the wall of the house so it doesn’t take up valuable ground space. It connects to the downpipe from the house gutters and fills up quickly and, before this summer, it never stood empty for long. In hindsight I should have bought a bigger one or bought two and connected them, but one seemed enough at the time and no one really wants to spend their money on water butts. So I didn’t, and now I’m spending my summer with the words of the woman from the water butt company in an endless loop in my brain: ‘No one installs water butts when they should.’
I grit my teeth and buy another expensive one to connect to the original. It holds 160 litres, which will double my water-storage capacity when the sky eventually yields rain. I fix it to the wall myself (not quite level but never mind), and connect it to the other water butt myself, and then sit and look at it, empty, by myself. Will two be enough? What would the water butt woman say? I think she’d suggest more water butts (of course she would, she sells water butts).
The shed has a roof, of course, so it could be another candidate for keeping me sane next summer. But the overhang is too great for traditional gutter brackets and, so far, I have ignored its potential to store water and hydrate the garden. But I return to it now; surely someone has invented a way of connecting gutter brackets to vastly overhanging roofs? Will I have to erect fascias? Will I need to get a man round? Surely there’s a bit of plastic for the job? I google the very thing and indeed someone has invented what I need – a bracket that clamps on to the roof and holds the gutter in place, albeit, I realise later, not very securely. Of course they are four times as expensive as regular gutter brackets but I have no choice if I am to save winter’s water. I buy some online and then head to my nearest DIY store for gutters and downpipes and two cheap water butts that I hope I will eventually be able to conceal with plants. I set it all up just in time for precious, life-giving rain.
A few weeks ago, during some of the driest, hottest weather we have ever seen in this part of the world, a woman spotted a hedgehog out during the day as it was climbing into a drainpipe on a busy high street. She acted quickly and grabbed the hedgehog before it could get stuck (it would never have been able to get out again), and took it straight to the rescue centre where it was found to be dehydrated and starving, along with all the other hogs that had been taken in since very early spring.
The little hog was weighed (400g), sexed (a female) and named (Minnie, as she was so small). She was given water and food in gentle doses, so as not to overwhelm her little system, and her own cage filled with soft bedding. She settled into the hoggy hospital well. Some hogs hate it and resist every attempt to care for them; they remain very firmly Wild. But Minnie seemed to know what was good for her. ‘She’s a delight,’ says Ann, who brings her round to be released into my garden. ‘She’s a little darling.’
Wildlife rescue centres are jam-packed with hedgehogs this year; they seem to have struggled more than most in the hot, dry weather. Hedgehogs come out of hibernation in early spring and refuel on juicy caterpillars, worms and beetles, rehydrating from puddles and ponds. It’s all timed so perfectly – after winter dormancy, the longer days and warmer temperatures encourage leaves to unfurl and flowers to blossom. Some of the year’s first insects feed on the blossom and others lay eggs on the leaves, while the warmer soil brings worms to the surface. April showers provide moisture but not too much, just enough for seeds to germinate but not enough to wash caterpillars off leaves. Just enough for a little puddle to form but not enough to completely saturate the soil. Spring, it’s the uncoiling of everything. It’s a little bit of bounce. ‘Hello,’ says everyone, blinking in the spring sunshine. ‘NOM,’ says the hedgehog. ‘NOM,’ says the baby bird. ‘NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM,’ say the wasps and the badgers and the slow worms and the bees, who are all bouncing, uncoiled, too, with the sudden abundance of everything.
But take away the showers, and the leaves unfurl but then shrivel, the eggs are laid but the caterpillars don’t develop. Do the worms come to the surface? No. Do puddles form? No. Without rain, spring is only half uncoiled, it’s an aborted bounce, more of a slow roll. Add to that fluctuating temperatures and tired animals that should have been conserving energy in hibernation but actually kept waking up because temperatures were so mild, and you end up with dehydration and hunger. To start the season dehydrated and hungry is one thing, but to struggle through to August? Imagine being so desperate you’re searching for moisture up a drainpipe.
Minnie is lucky. She was spotted by someone who knew she needed help and she was given that help. Too many people see hedgehogs out during the day and just take photos of them, such is our detachment from the natural world. They post the pics on social media. ‘Oh isn’t it cute, oh how lovely!’ Old Boring Pants here chimes in with a gentle ‘They shouldn’t actually be out in the day. Could you go back out and find it, pop it in a high-sided box and take it to a rescue centre ASAP? Thanks.’ I hate ruining the party but Christ.
I chat to Ann as she scoops Minnie out of a cat carrier and strokes her, gently, looking reluctant to let her go. ‘She really is lovely,’ says Ann, and I nod in response. Weighing 600g now, she’s still small compared to the chunky boys I catch on the camera at night. But she’ll have all the food she needs here.
‘But wait,’ I say. ‘She’ll mate with one of the boys and have babies…’ I count the weeks ‘… in mid-September.’ Hedgehogs emerge from hibernation in spring, feed themselves up to be in good breeding condition and then mate, the females giving birth to their first brood from late spring to early summer. They often have a second brood in September, but the hoglets from these second broods tend to struggle as there is less natural food available and they are unable to gain sufficient weight to survive hibernation. These babies are known as ‘autumn orphans’ and they rarely survive winter. Hedgehog ecologists suggest a weight of 450g is necessary for successful hibernation, anything less than that and the hoglets won’t make it. After a summer of (usually) dealing with hogs injured by strimmers or fixing a nasty cough caused by lungworm, rescuers like Ann turn their attention to feeding up little babies that can’t put weight on. The hoglets often spend all winter in their care and are released in spring.
‘She’ll have autumn orphans!’ I cry.
‘They’ll be fine though, sweetheart, they’re well looked after here. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep feeding them.’
Ann pops Minnie down at the entrance of the box I cleaned and filled with fresh straw, and the hog crawls in. It must be strange to give an animal so much care and love and then say goodbye to it like that. I promise to update Ann on any activity I catch on the cameras, and add an extra pile of kitten biscuits to the bowl in the feeding station and fresh water to the ‘bird bath’. Ann leaves to go and look for three hoglets that were spotted on Shoreham beach, and I head to bed. Minnie, almost certainly, has a lot of fun on her first night of freedom.
The rain comes early in the morning. It wakes me with a tap at the windows, and I get up and run into the garden, stand in it, watch it fall on leaves, kiss the pond. It’s light at first and then grows heavy as the darkest clouds roll in and throw down their water. I take shelter beneath the shed roof, which juts out just enough to protect me, and breathe in great lungfuls of petrichor. It’s raining. It’s finally raining!
The ground has been so hard it had started to echo like stone when I walked on it. Now, small puddles form as the compacted earth struggles to absorb moisture. This is how flooding starts; hard ground resists rain and so the water pools on the surface or finds a slope to roll down to join other puddles, to form a stream, a river, a flash. My little puddles will be fine and the pond could take a fair bit more if the ground remains stubborn, but I wonder how neighbours’ paving and plastic grass are looking. Wet, I imagine.
