It's alive!!!

It's been a while since the garden got much attention (though I'll be writing about the harvest soon), but this is a little set of observations that's been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Despite, or including, the slugs and creeping cinquefoil (this is what we thought was creeping buttercup), our garden is so alive with nature. Masses of it. It's awesome! Everyday, English creatures that exist all around us that you start to notice once you get close to the ground.

Earthworms: There are masses of them in our garden. Hundreds...probably many thousands. They're brilliantly camouflaged (yes, really, they look like plant roots!), live underground, and help to break down our soil and compost. Brilliant.

Frogs: We don't have a pond but we do have lots of clay-y soil and it's moisture rich. There's also a large patch of our garden that hasn't been weeded and has a thick layer of grass and weeds on it. This provides ample cover for the little amphibians and there's lots of them around. Also brilliantly camouflaged, they give you a real fright when they unexpectedly hop out of the grass. You have to be careful not to step on them at night though!

Spiders: If you were reading last year you'll know I love a good spider or two! And though we've moved house, we have plenty of arachnids in the new neighbourhood. Amazing co-ordination and web building skills. Awesome creatures. And there's a surprisingly large amount of them that just scuttle around on the ground too.

Bees: I'm not a huge fan of wasps (of which we've not seen very many this year), but bees are more tolerable. They seem to defy physics by flying, elegantly drifting from one flower to the next. They seem to come from far and wide in little teams to visit our plants. And, of course, we wouldn't have our fruits without their pollinating. Sadly, bees are rumoured to be in decline. We may well be setting up a little log or something next year to encourage bees to nest in our garden.

Everything else: There's beetles, ants, slugs and snails, weevils, grubs, caterpillars, centipedes. Really a plethora of different tiny creatures who make up the eco-system that is our garden. Some of them we love, some of them we hate, but they're all important in keeping the ground workable and fertile.

Nature is truly an awesome thing and when you get close to it you start to realise that even more. We praise God for the amazing things that has made, the detail of each little creature and the incredibly complex way that it all works together to bring us our food.

Naturewatch: Web Building!

Possibly not for the arachnophobic. Some action shots of the fat spider building a web. The sun was shining down and making the web glisten so I thought I'd try and catch it on, err, well not film exactly, but you know what I mean.

The reason I'm a bit fanatical about spiders is that...well...they're just amazing. They have these 8 legs and they build this super-strong web thing with stuff that they naturally produce to catch their food. The co-ordination required to spin a web is phenomenal, combined with their apparent ability to fly between high places to put up the initial outer structure of the web. Watching it happen is just incredible.

I am someone who believes in God and, though I don't believe the literal 7-day creation, I do believe that God created the natural world around us, and when I see something like a spider spinning a web I can only watch in awe at the detail and intricacy with which God made things.

Naturewatch: Fat spider

I like spiders! Which is just as well as there's about a million in our garden. Probably mostly the grown up babies that I spotted back in the spring.

I just liked this one because it used to be quite a skinny spider but she (we think it's a she) has put her web in such a good place that she's had a few meals too many and got really fat!

A case of "Who ate all the flies?"

Naturewatch: Our new Bonsai Tree!

At one of our friend's weddings we were fortunate enough to win the Bonsai tree that was used as a table decoration. This is my latest nature fascination.

Sadly, as we went on holiday for a week it got a bit neglected and dropped lots of leaves. With some TLC, lots of water and the sunniest place in the house there are lots of new buds forming. I'm worried about the fact that we've got hard water though - it's not supposed to like that. Hmm...

More naturewatching

SO the baby blackbirds have flown the nest, though it looks like a new brood may be on the way sometime...so my interest has turned to these little fella's that I found outside our house yesterday morning. Looks like some spider's eggs hatched and there was just a writhing tangle of little legs.

Seems that they "huddle" when they want to sleep:

And this little video shows them wriggling a bit and gives you an idea of scale. The white box is the gas meter box outside our house.

Awesome!

[Update 7th September]
Blogger now allows video uploads so the video is included here now too.

Learning to fly

So the little ones (the blackbirds - must give them names or something) are learning to fly still.

Got a couple of snaps of them today but only with my phone so they're not so good quality. Here's daddy on feeding duty...

The birds are out!!

Fun today! The little baby blackbirds decided to leave the nest. And so with much tweeting, flapping, and crashing they're down on the ground in the garden.

One of them, I think, flew into the window. I went to look and he was peering up at me! I then tried to take a photo, scared him off, and he went and flew away....straight into the dustbin! Poor fella.

It's been a real priviledge having the birds so visible in our garden. I hope we didn't scare them too much.

Will there be another brood in the summer?!

Nesting birds

One thing I've been enjoing about being back in Swindon is the garden. In London we had a flat with no outdoor space of our own. Here we have a little patch of lawn, a shed, and lots of plants!

In fact, we probably have more plants than all our neighbours. Which means that all the wildlife congregate on our patch.

Last year I discovered spiders. I've always thought them to be amazing creatures. And now I'm fascinated with birds!

We have a blackbird nesting right below our study window and it's been a real privilege to see them go from having Mr Blackbird dashing around collecting nesting material, to Mrs Blackbird sat protectively on her nest, through seeing the eggs, and then the tiny pink bodies of the newly hatched wriggling around, to the little, thin-feathered and gaping-mouthed ("feed me!!!") chicks. Creation is awesome and I love seeing it at work.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

Here are the little things: