Happy Christmas to patients and staff in hospitals everywhere
Wonderful view of trees and birds from Yeovil Hospital
There is little that can be seen from the windows of a hospital, except I had a wonderful view of the tops of Yeovil’s trees changing dramatically.
Each day they seemed to change and deepen and grow richer.
The views reminded me of those pictures I’ve seen of the Canadian and American trees, though Yeovil doesn’t have quite the same drama.
The only other things that were visible were the birds, seagulls and rooks mostly, although there was a trio of ducks that flew in V formation in the same direction at almost the exact same time early in the morning several days running.
One day I was quite excited to see a flight of swans – or maybe geese, I couldn’t be sure.
No-one else was particularly interested in them, but that could have been because they were far more ill than I was.
Back Home
When I got home from hospital, I found that my garden helper had rubbed down and re-painted my bird feeder in my absence, and my daughters had filled up all the feeders around the garden. The first full day I was home, I watched flocks of goldfinches arriving as though they had not eaten since I had been away, though they didn’t fool me.
The usual varieties of tits including, a little flock of beautiful little long tailed tits, soon joined them, followed by five fiesty greenfinches who, being a little
larger than goldfinches, made sure they had a feeder to themselves. I didn’t realise they could be such bullies.
Then the ground birds joined in, polishing up the dross that fell from the sunflower hearts; sparrows, two robins, a pair of dunocks, and chaffinches. Sad to say that one of the latter was affected by the nasty disease that makes them look as though they’re wearing furry boots. This one was obviously finding it difficult to stand, so it crouched. In the two weeks since then, it hasn’t been back.
I hope that its end was quick and not too painful.
Nature watching from my chair by the window
I haven’t been able to go out on Genevieve since July 1st because it’s been getting more and more difficult to do something as simple as getting on and off her.
Added to which, past recent events have meant that I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it again.
However, that doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to continue nature watching from my chair by the window.
It will be a little limited – I won’t see the wilder birds who prefer natural hedgerows, woods and fields. I won’t be able to follow the changing seasons in quite the same way, or the distant views, dressed aptly as the years progress.
I shall miss the smells of the seasons or watch the emergence of successions seasonal growth, and wayside flowers growing in their rightful places, and insects that are too far away for me to identify.
I shall miss the occasional herd of deer, or the quick glimpses of hares and rabbits.
But that is all very negative and it isn‘t.
I am tremendously lucky to have my own little nature reserve right here in my own garden with all the birds that visit and sometimes even tiny creatures – if the cats would stop trespassing.
I never know what I will see
In fact, I never know what I shall see, which is what makes it all the more exciting. In the past we had a young badger here, on another occasion, a grass snake with a frog in its mouth until it got alarmed at the sight of my sudden appearance and let it go.
We have also had a fox, pheasants, a leveret, slowworms and hedgehogs. Oh, and a wryneck once that hung around for about an hour.
So you see, if I can’t get out to see these things, sometimes they come to visit me.
Before I disappeared off to the depths of Yeovil hospital, I was watching the large and beautiful acer next door just beginning to change to its autumn dress.
I was intrigued when I noticed that it was the veins in the leaves that had begun to deepen to red before anything else happened. When I got home, most of the leaves
had blown off so I missed the most dramatic part of the change.
I wonder if it’s the veins that change first with all leaves.
Rowans in the garden
I have two rowans in the garden; one is a beautiful colour at this time of the year and has orange berries, the other a little less spectacular in the autumn except
that it has beautiful pink berries. Each day, a solitary blackbird feasts on the orange berries but hardly looks at the pink ones. I would love to know the difference in flavour between the colours, In fact, people tell me that the most of the red berries have gone already and Janie says that the hedgerows are now almost bereft of any berries at all. Which makes me wonder – do the birds know something that we don’t and if so, exactly what?
Meanwhile, we’ve had a lot of wind and a lot of rain, but we’re still not out of a drought.
Neither will we be, I gather, until we’ve had a lot more rain. In addition, we need some good, sharp frosts, although I know that people with an eye on their energy bills prefer this mild weather.
The trouble is that the successive dry seasons we have had recently means that the ground far below the surface is still not open enough to absorb all that rain. We need some really sharp frosts to help it to do that.
Happy Xmas to everyone
In the meantime, I can’t help my mind wandering back to my stay in hospital and the hard working staff that I met there.
So, happy Christmas, not just to the people of our village but to all those patients and staff in hospitals everywhere, And hopefully a happy and less turbulent new year