‘Well, it’s very weedy,’ she says. I make further gentle mutterings about the greenhouse and the tomatoes she’s been talking about growing since Ellie first mentioned going to look at this house over a year ago, and she mutters back something about a special path-weeding brush she needs to retrieve from her shed.
‘OK, off you go then.’ I crack on with the pruning, and wonder if I’ll have time to do the greenhouse myself.
We find Stanley jobs to do. After destroying a few sacrificial tulips, he makes an excellent daffodil deadheader, and shows his mum the difference between a new tulip and an old daffodil.
‘Told you he’s a gardener,’ I tell Ellie.
We work hard, Mum on the weedy path, Stanley on the deadheading, Ellie on keeping Stanley occupied, me on the roses. The previous owners must have loved their roses; I count 20 of them growing into the sky, which I use loppers to bring back to head height. There’s a honeysuckle, too, which I tame and bring back to the garden. My arms hurt and I’m tired. But I carry on, we have only one day. Mum eventually starts work on the greenhouse, clearing out old pots and what she calls ‘unusual finds’, and then pots on the three grafted tomato and sweet pepper plants I bought her for Mother’s Day. Eventually, I’m satisfied she will have room for her growing plants.
I have no time to make a vegetable bed but I fill an old recycling box with compost and cover it up, leaving instructions on when and how to pot on the pumpkin plants when they emerge. I have a feeling that, between them, Mum, Ellie and Stanley are not going to manage this. But we’ll see. At least I pruned the roses.
Back home and finally the sun comes. We’re treated to two days of it. Two days of blue and yellow. Two days of cheerfulness and laughter. ‘It makes such a difference, doesn’t it?’ says everyone, ‘a bit of sun’. And they’re right, of course, but I think back to how I spontaneously started singing in the park when the rain came after the drought, how it’s not sun specifically but the right balance of sun and rain that we crave, that’s somehow wired into us. Wired into us, I suppose, because sunshine and showers make the food grow – too much of one or the other and life becomes hard. Somehow, instinctively, our bodies know this.
I garden gently. There’s a cold wind but I can just get away with a T-shirt if I keep moving. I sow ‘hard-wearing’ grass seed on hard-worn patches of bare earth, and cover them with frames and cloches to stop the dog, the hedgehogs and the foxes walking on them. They butt against the edge of the pond and I wonder who – me or Tos – will be the first to slip and fall into the water. I tend the new border at the back, selectively weeding out some of the creeping speedwell, chickweed, cleavers and young nettles, while letting plenty remain. I’m pleased to see one of the globe artichoke heads that I rescued from a bin in autumn and fixed to the trellis as a sort of bird buffet (which was then ignored) has yielded seedlings. I untie the seedhead from the trellis and chuck it down where I think I might like a globe artichoke to grow, hopefully recreating the soft landing a fallen stem might make in the wild. I remove little clumps of grass from the border and transplant them into the lawn, I remove figwort seedlings from around the pond (the figwort is allowed to live at the back of the garden only). I remove spent daffodil flowers and compost them. I check on new growth that has pushed through the soil since I last looked. I find a home for my new bird bath, which I bought second-hand from the man at the end of the road. I greet my first dark-edged bee-fly of the year – ‘Hi!’ – and lie on my belly and gaze into the pond.
The water fizzes with new life. There are masses of tiny things – little nymphs, or midge larvae, perhaps, that have been laid in the pond recently. I spy water hoglice eating algae off leaves, water snails slithering over stones. There are tadpoles, of course, thousands of them. Despite the recent cold, some of them are quite big already, it won’t be long before they develop legs. Others are small, just recently hatched. I watch seething masses of them in various clumps, frantically eating. The pond is coming back to life.
Some of the tadpoles are eating the toadspawn. I suspected they were doing this a few days ago but dismissed this because toads, their larvae and their eggs, contain a toxin called bufotoxin, which makes them slightly poisonous and distasteful to predators. This means they’re not eaten by newts or fish; indeed toads seem to prefer to spawn in ponds populated by fish, presumably because the fish eat the competition (the newts and the frogs). But frog tadpoles? What are they doing?
Lying on my belly with my head close to the water I can see that they’re just eating the jelly that surrounds the egg. The bufotoxin is present in the egg only, so the crafty tads are getting their fill of the protein-rich jelly and leaving the eggs without protection. The jelly is there to insulate the eggs, to protect them while they develop into tiny larvae. It’s then the first thing the young tadpoles eat before finding other food in the pond. Without it, it’s unlikely these eggs will survive.
Oh precious toads! I have waited so long for them and they are being destroyed by other things I love. This is too cruel. It’s too late to save them now; the eggs float in the water like words spilled as jumbled letters off a page. Some of them seem slightly half-developed, will they make it? I don’t know. And then I realise, of course, there is a way to find out.
I retrieve a glass bowl and a small jar from the kitchen and return to the pond where the toadspawn is. I try sinking the jar into the pond but come away with a few eggs and lots of tadpoles. I change my tactic, honing in on dense clumps of the stuff and using my fingers to shovel it in. This works better – there are still tadpoles, of course, you couldn’t retrieve anything from this pond at the moment without tadpoles – but there are more eggs. Gently, I tip the jar so the eggs spill into the bowl while the tads swim to the other end, where the water remains deepest. Then I release the tads back into the pond.
I don’t collect much, just enough to see if it develops. I inspect my newly decanted quarry and fish out two rogue water hoglice that I suspect are also partial to a bit of spawn jelly. Some of the spawn is still intact; the eggs are encased still in small amounts of goo. They’re at various stages of development; there are tight little balls that look like they’ll never do anything, but there are little nuggets, too, little half-formed things that are neither egg nor tadpole. It’s these I’ve got my eye on.
With less jelly to feed on they will need something else to eat, so I return to the kitchen and retrieve fish flakes from under the sink. These I will feed to my tadpoles as they get bigger, when they start getting a taste for meat. I put a few in the water and watch them disintegrate into it. There will be plenty of nutrients for them to eat, for now. Lastly, I dig out my trusty caterpillar mesh tent from the shed and lower the bowl into it, to keep marauding birds at bay. Then I move the whole kit to the side return, which gets very little sun, so they don’t overheat.
The garden is transformed again. Each time I go out, there is something new to gawp at, something shiny to marvel. Today it’s all primrose flowers and unravelling fern fronds, mitten-like leaf buds and the promise of blossom. Little details reveal themselves as I walk around: hints of fresh green hawthorn leaves against blood-red uneaten berries, the first chequered blooms of snake’s head fritillary, the fattest of hellebore seedpods.
I’m pleased to see there are masses of flower buds on both the guelder rose and spindle. In previous years these two native shrubs have borne only one or two little blooms but now, in their fourth year, they’re about to flower their socks off. I can’t wait to see which pollinators visit them. I can’t wait for guelder berries and bright orange and pink spindle fruit. Who will eat them? How will they look against the rest of the garden? It’s all so exciting.
I need to go over the borders again because there are things popping up all over the place that shouldn’t be there. Alliums that somehow worked themselves into shady corners, things I’ve planted too close together or that have grown into the space intended for something else. Grass seedlings everywhere except, of course, the lawn. I’m sad to see there are ominous empty spaces where there should be things – there’s no sign of regrowth from the penstemons; have I lost my penstemons? It’s silly, I know, but I loved them, and I planted them next to the buddleia so the wine-red of their bell-shaped blooms would complement the fresh purple of the buddleia’s panicles. It was a flower combo that looked smart and sumptuous, something someone scruffy, like me, would never normally be able to pull off. It was a combo that was accidental at first, borne from plunging something at the back of the border because I had no space elsewhere for it, but which I couldn’t stop staring at once it got going. As the flowers started to fade and the display lost its mojo, I added a second penstemon, from the front garden, so there would be two flowering among the buddleia, with agapanthus, nepeta and cranesbills in the foreground, plus a splash of white from the Shasta daisies. Now, in the year where I would finally see them looking their glorious best, the penstemons have gone and died. Looking at the border now, I can’t make out the Shasta daisies, either. It makes sense; both can suffer in winter wet, especially on clay soil. And if there’s one thing we had this winter it was wet. I haven’t quite given up hope but it’s not looking good.
I can’t tell the difference between honesty, charlock and garlic mustard seedlings but there are masses of them all over the garden. Is it honesty? I think it is, but I’ve been caught out before. I don’t mind charlock and garlic mustard at the back of the borders but not centre-stage, not bang in the middle of my display. I look them up and check them against the clumps of heart-shaped leaves. I think it’s honesty. Or at least some of it is. Most of it is. Maybe.
I’m pleased to see the greenest of ivy leaves, the newest of climbing hydrangea foliage. The gaps between the ivy plants are closing now. I grin at the thought of an ivy-clad fence, with climbing hydrangea growing among it, and of all the things that will live in it. I post about it on Twitter and men tell me my fence will fall down.
The hops and golden clematis, Clematis tangutica, on the trellis are coming into growth. Normally I cut these back in early spring but I have left them this year so as not to put the robins off. Clematis tangutica is a Group 3 clematis, so flowers on new growth only. So if you don’t cut it back hard every spring you end up giving your neighbours free flowers, while you are left staring at a tangled mass of old stems. I’m happy with a tangled mess but I’d like the flowers to stay here, so I cut the stems at the base of the trellis but I don’t remove the old growth so it remains to provide shelter for birds until new stems grow into its place. The hops, too, can stay tangled. The robins, of course, have decided to nest elsewhere but one day, perhaps, they will take a chance on the garden, and maybe they won’t need the box, maybe there will be home enough for them in the climbers.
The tadpoles in the pond are getting big and swimming strongly. It won’t be long before they have legs. I scatter fish flakes over the surface and watch the tads gulp them up with little clicking noises. The toad tadpoles in the bowls are little commas now, so they are growing after all. I add fresh water from the water butt and move the bowl around a bit to give the illusion of moving water. I have absolutely no idea at all if they will like this but it feels appropriate to try.
The front garden is coming along, I think. There’s a lot of grass, but among it are primroses and cowslips, lungwort and snake’s head fritillary. There are clumps of things that will look nice, I’m sure: ox-eye daisies, greater knapweed, red clover, ribwort plantain. It’s a meadow, of sorts, but it’s odd-looking, for now. I need to get in to see if there are yellow rattle seedlings. I might see if I can cut the grass a bit, to give things a chance. I need to trim next door’s hedge so it doesn’t steal more light than is necessary from the things I want to grow. It may yet prove itself beautiful.
We are having a proper spring and I’m grateful for it. We get sunshine and showers, frosts and the odd bout of above-average temperatures that allow us to dream, hopefully, of summer. There’s a fair amount of wind, of wobbly jet stream, of hot and cold and wet and dry and Christ-will-you-just-make-up-your-mind? But it feels, largely, normal, perhaps on the cool side of normal. Spring-like. Not like 2022 when the ground was cracking already due to lack of rain. There’s plenty of time yet for cracked earth; I’m just grateful, now, for full water butts.
Our gulls are nesting now. I hear them mating, see them gathering sticks, watch them sit on eggs with a contentedness I can only dream of having myself. A lesser black-backed gull on a roof against a blue sky is the most beautiful thing. To think that Brighton and Hove is full of them – full of gulls on rooftops, gulls mating in the most ungainly and noisy fashion, gulls gathering sticks to live in the sky. I love them. We are so lucky to have them.
They’re still being harassed by Drone Bastard and we are running out of ways to stop him. The RSPB has confirmed that what he’s doing – disturbing active nests with a drone – is illegal, but we’re not sure if they’ve been to see him this year. The RSPCA has been to see him but has decided what’s he’s doing isn’t illegal, and they have told him so (helpful, thanks). I spoke with the man who paid him a visit and he was absolutely confident that flying a drone at active birds’ nests isn’t illegal.
‘If he goes on to the roof and removes nesting material, that’s illegal,’ he says. ‘But dive-bombing nests with a drone? However unpleasant that is, it’s not illegal. Plus, for what it’s worth,’ continues the man, ‘he’s wasting his time. He won’t stop them nesting.’
‘But what if there are chicks in the nest?’ I ask. ‘What if he’s causing eggs to break and preventing the parents from feeding their chicks?’
‘Not illegal,’ he says, and tells me to get footage of the man climbing on to the roof to destroy nests, which of course we won’t get now because he knows we’re on to him.
‘Please be very careful what you say on your Facebook group,’ he says. ‘Please don’t misquote me.’ I tell him I have 33,000 followers on Twitter but I won’t tell them.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
‘I’ll write about it in my book instead,’ I say.
Our local councillor comes round and we take him to the warehouse, where we find Drone Bastard using his drone to dive-bomb gulls. We watch him for a while, and then the councillor goes to speak to him while we hide around the corner. ‘Be careful,’ we tell him, and sure enough, the man frog-marches him off his property and shouts until he’s blue in the face. At least he can see what we’re up against.
Finally, we think the police pay him a visit, or at least speak to him (annoyingly they won’t give us details). Everything goes quiet for a while and we four members of Gulls Allowed tentatively book an evening in the pub to celebrate. But then it starts up again. He’s bought a new drone, an enormous thing and the way he uses it now is even more menacing. Once again, three, four, five times a day, the peace is ruined by crying gulls, flying off their nests and eggs to get away from this new and unfamiliar threat. It’s absolutely devastating.
At this point, I realise he’s spending more money on drones than he would need in order to have his gutters regularly cleared, which he claims is the root cause of his issue. This is the third drone we’ve seen him use; he must be spending thousands of pounds. To have someone clear your gutters once a month during nesting season – £300?
The sun is shining and I take a break to trim my side of next door’s hedge, which is largely Japanese spindle and must be cut at least twice a year or it will eat my house. I check it thoroughly for nesting house sparrows, even though I know they’re not nesting in it because the hedge is outside the window, in front of which is the sofa, where I sit. The house sparrows nest in holey houses, not in the hedge, and not in the expensive nest boxes I installed in my wall cavities for them, either.
I cut it back gently, starting at the base and then using the step ladder to climb to the top, to stop it growing into the guttering, which is already living on borrowed time. Next door’s uncut half sticks out like a sore thumb and, for the first time in four years, I knock and ask if they would like me to cut their side, too. They almost bite my hand off. ‘Yes, please! Please cut my side of the hedge, please do it, yes!’ I laugh. They bring me a little chocolate egg, which I give to Emma, and for me I take their clippings to feed my compost bin (for all that I hate it, Japanese spindle composts beautifully). It’s the day after Storm Noa and it’s comparatively calm and sunny, a good spring day. I watch house sparrows fly to and from holey houses, hairy-footed flower bees chase each other around pulmonaria. I’m wearing a T-shirt with a big bumblebee on it, and feeling some semblance of hope, except there are very few bumblebees about. Late, perhaps, due to the recent cold snap. As I trim the hedge, one sparrow remains inside and chirps gently, keeping me company, and I feel happy that I’m not disturbing it or causing it distress. But then the gulls start crying, and I look up to see the enormous drone, looking like some sort of plane, flying low over the rooftops and pausing over nests to dive-bomb them. I can’t tell you how much I hate Drone Bastard.
The other three members of Gulls Allowed live closer to the action and have a good view of the nests he’s attacking. They say there are several pairs of lesser black-backed gulls who have not been put off nesting and are currently sitting on eggs. They say the gulls rise and try to attack the drone before, eventually, settling back down again. They say the gulls should be OK – it looks like the man from the RSPCA was right.
But it’s not the point, is it? It’s not enough that the gulls should just about manage to raise chicks despite the efforts of one man who wants to stop them. They should be able to nest safely and peacefully, to sit on eggs against a blue Brighton sky, to raise squawky gangly things that fall off roofs and get into scrapes because they’re BABIES and they’re ridiculous. Imagine a drone flying at your head every time you try to feed the dog or change your baby’s nappy. Imagine putting your child to bed and having someone constantly trying to stop you. I’m not convinced Drone Bastard is well, and I feel sad for him. But he’s got to stop tormenting these gulls.
I look on Facebook Marketplace for a drone. I have never flown one before and don’t really know what I’m looking for. I chat with a man who’s selling an old one for £30. He promises it works but it doesn’t have a camera. Is that enough to do what I want with it? And what do I want to do, really? I fantasise about sending up my drone every time he sends up his, and flying it over his stupid head to distract and intimidate him. I would need a camera for that, certainly. What about using it to fly at his drone and chase it off the gulls’ nests? Or using it to attack his, like some sort of robot war? That, too, would disturb the gulls.
I’m so angry with him. He’s clearly been spoken to by the police and the RSPCA and he’s responded by buying a bigger drone, by parading it around to show all of us who have complained about him that he’s in charge. I want to throw dog shit into his warehouse. I want to empty tins of paint over his vans. I want to graffiti the words GULL KILLER all over his precious business. I can’t do any of those things because they are illegal and the law is firmly on his side. I hate everything.
Back in the house I stand at the kitchen window and stare into the garden. The robins are trying to get to the bird feeder but the house sparrows are in the way. They take it in turns to fly at the feeder and hover beside it for a few seconds, presumably with the hope of persuading a sparrow to shift or at least budge up, which none of them seems interested in doing. They fly back and forth, between the hawthorn and the feeder, eventually unseating the sparrows. They take a couple of sunflower hearts but seem to lose interest in it after the other birds have gone. Hmm. I’ve got my eye on you, robins.
I watch them for a while. I’m sure they’re not nesting in my garden but they still seem quite attached to the area where the robin box is. I watch them fly around a bit but always lose them when they get to that spot – which I think is the ivy growing up the fence beneath the box. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed them nest building, as they would have been flying to and from the spot determinedly, with nest material in their beaks. Perhaps they are nesting elsewhere but are regretting it? Perhaps they are a few doors down but feel sad they are not here. Perhaps one is nagging the other, ‘We really should have nested at Kate’s.’ More realistically, I wonder if Storm Noa destroyed their existing nest and they are now reconsidering their options. It’s a possibility, I suppose. Maybe they haven’t started nesting yet? It seems late, mid-April, but it has been cold and perhaps they are young and this is their first coupling. Perhaps they don’t know what they’re doing, and are taking their time over their decision, although I’m terrified at the thought of them nesting on the ground behind a measly bit of ivy. ‘Have you heard of cats?’ I mouth to the robins through the double-glazed kitchen window. If they start nesting on the ground beneath the robin box I shall never sleep again.
The ‘honesty’ is garlic mustard. Of course it is. All of it. I walk around the garden and laugh at every single plant I have lovingly dotted around in ones and threes, each one developing little white flowers at its tip rather than the larger purple and white blooms they’re supposed to have. I’ve planted them so well. If they had been honesty the garden would be a flowering mass of purple and white right now.
‘It’s a shame you’re so bad at gardening,’ says Emma.
