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.
There is some honesty but it won’t flower until next year. The seeds I threw around the beds in autumn have germinated and the plants are growing strongly. I make a note of where they are so, when I transplant them around later in the year, I’ll have a chance of moving the right ones.
The garlic mustard is looking beautiful, actually. As yet untouched by insects, its leaves are fresh and green, with a little ring of reddish foliage around a central head of the whitest flowers, so bright and full of promise. They will grow to around a metre in height and look handsome in my shady woodland borders and around the pond, but not among poppies and agapanthus and buddleia and catmint. I do have limits. I weed them out of the pollinator border and leave those growing on the shady side, along with some others around the pond that will also get some sun. I laugh a bit more. Maybe I am really bad at gardening?
I introduced garlic mustard a few years ago. I had hoped to attract orange-tip butterflies, although I’ve never seen one in the garden, let alone a caterpillar. Garlic mustard, cuckoo flower and, to a lesser extent, honesty and sweet rocket, are all food plants for the orange-tip butterfly, whose eggs and young caterpillars are orange, in a nod to the male’s beautiful wing tips (the female’s are black). Every year I check the stems and leaves for eggs and caterpillars, and every year I’m disappointed. Maybe this year, the year I have a lot more garlic mustard than I bargained for, will be the year of the orange-tip butterfly.
In the front the meadow is developing nicely. There are large grassy patches, which I intend to cut back in stages, as if I were a highland cow grazing on an open piece of native hay meadow. This would create microhabitats that don’t exist at the moment, while enabling wildflowers to get a step ahead of the growing game. The beauty of the front-garden meadow is that it’s small so I can channel my inner highland cow on my knees with a pair of scissors.
It’s still looking odd. There’s a huge angelica that’s growing tall and developing its flower head, just in front of the window. It’s been in the ground for nearly three years now. A biennial, it was supposed to flower in 2022 but, like many plants, it simply refused to bloom in the drought. I’ll whip it out as soon as it’s set seed, find somewhere for its children to grow next year; it can’t live in the meadow, it’s too big and ungainly. There’s also a tired old perennial wallflower, which I haven’t the heart to remove because it usually flowers all year round, although is not doing so at the moment. The hedge shadow is its usual bald self, which irritates me, but probably, hopefully, provides a home for mining bees.
I’m pleased to see the ivy I planted in the gap in the hedge is not yet dead. This fills me with hope that, one day, it will take hold and not only fill in the gap but grow through it, increasing the biodiversity of the hedge and perhaps even limiting the growth of the Japanese spindle. I have other rooted ivy cuttings sitting in water in the kitchen, some of which are earmarked for my back fence but others which could be added to the little gaps in the hedge. It’s a long game, waiting for ivy to take hold, but I’m here for it.
Without honesty, the back garden is looking flowerless, green and almost lush but not quite ready for the season. The guelder rose and spindle are in full leaf but have not yet flowered, while the hawthorn is just coming into leaf and the rowan is not far behind. By the end of the month there will be blossom and light, blooms on which my eyes and bees’ tongues can feast. It’s a shame about the honesty, but if the garlic mustard brings butterflies it will be a mistake worth making.
I stand in the kitchen and watch rain fall on to the garden. There’s no wind and the water falls in straight lines, landing on leaves, on the compost bin, in bubbles on the pond. I can hear the gentle trickle of water filling the butt beside me, the drips as it lands in puddles on the patio. I watch my new bird bath fill up, which yesterday I saw sparrows bathe in for the first time.
The garden has a lushness I haven’t known before. The grass is full and thick, the ivy is bunching up. The rowan and hawthorn are just about in leaf now, the rowan’s leaves with a hint of blue that you only see in the first flush of spring growth. A bit of warmth and there will be blossom – not just in the trees but in the guelder rose and spindle, too. I still can’t wait to see them.
The below-average temperatures have preserved spring flowers but delayed those of summer: there are still primroses and cowslips, hellebores and snowflakes. But everything else is taking its time. I want to see them, I want the bees to wake up. But I still want this rain – I want it all.
The robin flies into the garden and heads straight to the ivy, into which he dives because he can now, because it’s thick and strong enough to support him. He seems to find something, and then struggles to tug it out, and I don’t see what he takes off with. He’s not nesting here, I know that, but I’m confident he will one day. For him, the garden is just becoming good enough.
Sparrows, which always seem more bothered by rain than most, as if clamouring to shelter beneath an imaginary umbrella, land on the feeder but give up and retreat. A field mouse dashes between the habitat pile and the hedgehog feeding station, its mouth full of stolen biscuits. There is a stillness and serenity to gentle rain, and I am grateful for it.
The new border at the back has flowering red geums, which look beautiful with the marsh marigold in the foreground, a plant combination I hadn’t realised when I planted them at the time. Soon there will be foxgloves and cranesbills, catmint and ornamental poppies. Red campion, viper’s bugloss, roses and clematis. Will plants flower better this year? Will there be ruddy clover and lamb’s ears? A large clump of red clover blocks my view of the pond and I realise that it, too, should be moved to the front meadow.
I am irritated by plants growing too closely together, by garlic mustard that should be honesty, by the summer pollinator border that looks terrible in spring. I make mental notes to fix these when I can, to make everything prettier. I eye up large clumps of primrose that I can divide when they’ve finished flowering, at snowflakes that could be used to fill gaps. A gardener’s work is never done, but that’s more than half the joy of it.
Some of the most important pieces I’ve read in recent months have been from climate protesters explaining how they got into doing what they do. They post on social media, addressing those who sit at home wanting and feeling that they ought to be helping the cause, but not quite being able to do so. They say things like, ‘It takes a while to work out how you can be useful.’ They say, ‘Everyone wakes up in the morning and looks for a million excuses not to protest.’ They tell you it’s OK to turn up for an hour and stand at the back, they say you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. But they also say, and this is what chimes with me the most, that for those who are feeling despair and lack of hope about the climate crisis, getting out and being surrounded by people who feel the same is incredibly uplifting. It’s the doing versus not-doing, they say, the finding of your people. ‘Don’t just sit at home and cry while doom-scrolling,’ they say, ‘get out there! You will work out how you can be useful.’
I’ve never been much of a protester. I’ve spent my life going to Gay Pride events – I’ve marched two or three times, watched the parade a handful more. But mainly I head straight to the party. Beyond Pride, I’ve done a bit. Back in 2000, as a green first-year university student and new member of the student union LGBT group, I took part in small protests about Section 28, Thatcher’s hateful local government Act that prevented homosexuality from being ‘promoted’ in schools. The Act was in place from 1988 to 2003, for almost my entire school career. In reality, it meant gay children, like me, who had never really had to think about who they were, were suddenly plunged into the despair of being wrong, of being ‘other’. It meant being bullied for being gay while teachers turned a blind eye. It meant listening to teachers being openly homophobic, it meant my local newspaper dedicating a whole page to the vitriolic outburst of the husband of one of my teachers (who I adored), in which he argued that gay men were paedophiles and suggested they shouldn’t have access to the NHS (I was 16 when I read this and it broke my heart). It meant entering adolescence, suddenly alone, with not a single adult having my back.
While discussions took place to repeal the clause, a privately funded campaign was set up to keep it. Part of this campaign was a poll funded by Brian Souter, founder of the Stagecoach travel company. Along with others in my university LGBT group, I boarded Stagecoach buses and handed ‘Repeal Section 28!’ leaflets to bemused passengers. I was also an active filler of envelopes with paperclips, which were then sent by Freepost to the Keep the Clause campaign, to waste their money. I remember being cold, standing at the bus stop waiting for buses. I remember feeling awkward and exposed as I handed people leaflets, the discomfort of stuffing envelopes while kneeling on a hard, dusty floor. But I’m glad I was there. Section 28 was finally repealed in 2003. I’m glad I was part of that piece of queer history. (And no, I still won’t travel by Stagecoach.)
I didn’t protest Brexit, I didn’t attend any of the women’s marches. I did march against the Iraq War and former President Trump’s state visit to the UK. I’ve been on a few School Strike for Climate marches, rallies for Palestine and local Extinction Rebellion events (if there’s a local event I’m more likely to go). But that’s about it; I struggle with the big London ones, they’re big and noisy and involve a much greater effort to go, and I would always rather be in the garden. Still, that piece of queer history, that momentous repeal that means today’s queer kids have an easier time in school? I was there. It feels good knowing I was there.
I get Extinction Rebellion emails. I’ve joined Zoom meetings and chatted on the phone with Just Stop Oil volunteers. I sign up to talks and open calls and then don’t bother attending. There’s a wall, a stumbling block, that has so far stopped me from being properly involved. I want to be a part of it but, I suppose, I’m scared. I don’t want to be kettled, I don’t want to get into trouble with the police or lose any work. I certainly don’t want to be cold. But I do want to be there. For the birds and the hedgehogs and the elephants and for my nephew Stanley and his little brother on his way. For me and my mental health. For literally everything we live for and love, all of us.
Extinction Rebellion recently announced it was moving away from disruptive tactics, to ‘prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks.’ Along with Greenpeace and 200 other organisations, they organised The Big One, a three-day peaceful protest in London, where they pleaded with people to come but to ‘leave the locks, glue and paint behind’. Would more people turn up? People like me?
Different groups with different interests arrived on different days. Saturday was ‘Biodiversity Day’, where wildlife people marched to lament the loss of life both here and across the world. But I went on Sunday, with my friend Abigail. Both of us have chatted about wanting to do more, wanting to be there, wherever ‘there’ is, because it matters.
There were no marches on the Sunday but lots of stalls, demos and activities where you could write messages to the world and make a paper boat with a plea to the Home Secretary to open safe routes of passage for refugees, which would be floated down the Thames to Westminster. We watched Amazonian tribespeople speak of the threats to their cultures and land, we wore stickers, we chatted to scientists. We even cheered on the London Marathon, which ran through a part of Parliament Square and I was so happy to see that no one attempted to disrupt it. Then we went for a pint before making our separate ways home. It was nice to have some company, it was good to go with a friend. And I’m so glad I did it.
The world needs us in whatever way we can give ourselves to it. And we must. We must give ourselves to the world and the climate crisis. To the people of the global south, to our children, to all of the species that face extinction. Now, in whatever way we can. We all need to step up and do more, to show those in power that we won’t tolerate them reneging on the 2016 Paris Agreement. As I type, our prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has just approved the licences of 100 more gas and oil projects in the North Sea, while he continues to fly around the country in private jets and helicopters. Sunak is not interested in the climate crisis, he’s made that abundantly clear. But he won’t be in power for ever and the next government needs to know that its people won’t stand for more gas and oil. We won’t stand for further destruction of natural habitats, of the near-death of rivers, of the stifling of the right to protest, of the continued mistreatment of refugees, many of whom are coming to our shores because of climate change. If we stay home and cry while doom-scrolling, how will we tell them?
Emma knows that if I am pottering in the kitchen and then suddenly go quiet, I am looking through the kitchen window. She used to call out, ‘What are you doing?’ But now she doesn’t need to. Now she knows I am looking at leaves and flowers, tracking growth, planning which things to move or divide and imagining what the borders will look like when my dreams and plans have been realised. Or I might be looking through binoculars, at frogs in the pond or mining bees in the lawn. I might be ogling a blackcap in the hawthorn tree or a chiffchaff on the roses, or greeting my first-ever black redstart.
(Actually, no, I did a fair amount of squealing when I saw the black redstart.)
Today I am watching the robins, which, of course, are now gathering nest material and taking it back to their favourite patch of ivy. So they were intending to nest here after all, they just hadn’t got around to it. It’s late, nearly May. I wonder if this is their first time nesting or if they have been assessing the availability of invertebrate food and didn’t want to start until there was plenty to feed their young. Or if they have attempted nesting elsewhere and it’s not worked out. I will never know but I’m so glad they’re here.
I’ve never understood how people don’t notice birds nesting in their garden, because nest building is very obvious and deliberate behaviour. It’s the female robin that builds the nest, which is cup-shaped and made using dead leaves and moss and lined with hair. They’re typically found on or near the ground in any number of situations, including climbing plants and log piles, as long as they’re completely obscured. I can’t see exactly where they’re nesting and that’s the point – I’m not supposed to. But I watch her gathering leaves from the habitat pile and the borders, and disappearing with them in the general direction of the ivy, back and forth, back and forth.
