Category: - Judith Johnson

Snow snow snow!

11/3/2013

Wow! Seems like the north-easterly wind blowing in from Eastern Europe caught quite a lot of us by surprise today, in spite of our hard-working weather forecasters! This was the view from my workplace today. I had what was possibly the scariest drive ever getting home on the unsalted High Weald B-roads - even the 4-wheel drives were taking it very slow. There were cars getting stuck on hills, sliding into hedges. I feel grateful to have got home safe, and hope the same for all my compadres out there!

Thank goodness for Kent Wildlife Trust, whose bird-feeders were attracting a lot of business today! These blue-tits were so busy eating they took no notice of me!

Corvus

18/8/2012

I love black birds of all kinds - blackbirds, of course, with their cheery whistling, yellow beaks, and bright inquisitive eyes, but also crows, rooks and ravens.

A year or two back I bought the book Corvus - A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson (Granta), for my son Tom, since we've always shared a joy in watching birds in the garden. I'd heard extracts from the book read on BBC Radio 4 while driving. I recently borrowed it from Tom, and found it a rich, enjoyable read. I was amused and delighted, but also informed - perfect result. This is what I like best about reading!

I was interested to read about the author's experience of, and love for, the birds which she has shared her house and garden with. The bird-watchers I regularly chat to at Bough Beech pooh-poohed the idea that anyone who takes birds from the wild into their house should be taken seriously. However, I think even they might enjoy this book.

Esther Woolfson tells her readers about the prejudices and myths surrounding the corvid family, and I am glad to have had my mind opened on the subject. I must admit to always having had a slightly ambivalent attitude to magpies. At primary school our teacher taught us that when we saw a magpie we should always say "Good afternoon, Mr Magpie, and how is your wife today?" in order to avoid bad luck, and I did just that for many years!

There are many thoughts expressed beautifully in Corvus, but here is one of my favourite quotes:

"To believe that humans have a monopoly of the things that deepen life on this earth - memory, appreciation, imagination, emotion - seems both arrogant and simplistic; to imagine that, without a language we recognise, birds and animals exist in a world of thoughtlessness, of lesser communication, lesser feeling, surely wrong."

Extraordinary Ordinary Gardens

21/7/2012

Versailles

A couple of years back I enjoyed visiting some of the places in the French department of Yvelines, including the Palace of Versailles. The gardens there are renowned, but personally the grand formal gardens are not my cup of tea. Even Sissinghurst (dare I say it!) leaves me a tad cold.

I read this week that a huge number of front gardens in recent times have been concreted over to make parking space for cars. Many others, following a certain kind of designer-led gardening, have been covered in slate, or the kind of chippings you used to see mostly on graves. Apparently the decline of sparrows is one of the things that’s been linked to the decrease in foliage because of this change.

My own garden is currently somewhat neglected, as our time is diverted to writing activities, but I’m sure the local wildlife is finding it a sanctuary! It is currently boasting the odd bindweed trumpet (drat that bindweed – its roots go to the ends of the earth), but also a rumbustious display of nasturtiums, wild strawberries, white roses, fuschias, love-in-the-mist, rosemary etc. Cheeky cats high-wire along the trellised fences and friendly blackbirds and fat wood-pigeons visit daily.

I am very fond of the homely front gardens of ordinary houses, often very small, where householders lavish love, attention and quite a lot of money on making something of beauty to share with passers-by. I have occasionally heard the odd sniffy comment about such gardens being fussy and vulgar, but I find them infinitely charming and heart-warming, and I am ever grateful for them. Here are a few pictures of some of our Southborough gardens, with a couple thrown in for good measure from further afield. I hope you might enjoy looking at them!

Fifty Shades of Green

4/7/2012

This is a beautiful view of at least fifty shades of green which I see almost every day. They say that hospital interiors used to be painted green as it was one of the most relaxing colours for humans, and it certainly has always been of my favourites, though as I get older I find that my favourites gets to be an increasingly wide field!

Of course the rain in this Sceptred Isle contributes to its lush greenery, as a New Zealand relative reminded me at the weekend. At the moment there is a green woodpecker to be seen in this garden fairly regularly, and just now a robin is nesting nearby. Every time I go down the path to make a cup of tea, he flies out and up into the copper beech. Poor thing! I wish I could convey to him that I would not ever harm him or his family!

Things that made me smile today

25/5/2012

The brightness of this mid-May morning, emerging from rainy yesterday
The enormous venerable copper beech at the top of Southborough Common
Two chestnut-coated tiny new calves at Moorden
The hairy buttocks of a BT Engineer kneeling at the bottom of a telegraph pole at Chiddingstone Causeway
Hearing the bees buzzing on the ceanothus
Walking with my friend Petra by Bough Beech
Birdwatcher acquaintance telling me he loved rock and roll
Rooks wheeling in close harmony over their high roost at Winkhurst Green
Two patient green/blue feathered drakes by the pond at same
Kestrel hovering at Chiddingstone Hoath while a crow watched from the hedge
Beefy young man walking a tiny dachshund at Speldhurst
Honeysuckle blooming on our garden fence

Planet Earth

12/5/2012

Just joined up with my American cousin on Facebook, and saw a beautiful u-tube on his Wall of our planet - it inspired me to go and find my Scrapbook, and a wonderful poem, by a 12 year old schoolgirl, that I pasted in some years ago. Can't find her name on Google, Facebook or Twitter, so if you're out there, Leonora, I hope you don't mind me sharing this. If you do and contact me, I will of course delete it if you'd rather!

The Earthsick Astronaut
He is yearning for his earth senses.
He wants the smell of burning wood to swirl up
And tickle his nose
Like a coarse, rough feather from a bird on the earth;
He wants the sight of a fire,
The flickering fish tails
That make his eyes see nothing else;
He wants to taste bacon, the real bacon,
Tingling on his tongue to evoke
The smell, the sound, the flavour ...
He wants the touch of cold air on his skin;
Air, a free spirit, teasing, running;
A brush-past kiss on a warm cheek is
His memory;
And then ... the sad things;
Gravestones like babies' teeth, yet
Decayed with lichen and moss.
But still he is yearning,
Yearning for air, for fire,
For Earth.

Home Sweet Home

20/4/2012

One of the things I am grateful for is that my day-job gives me opportunities, from time to time, to travel abroad, and over the last couple of years I've enjoyed visits to Paris, Cologne, the Somme, Brittany and Normandy among other places. On a daily basis, though, I am also blessed with a really beautiful commute to work. After yesterday's downpour (the farmers I'm sure are happy, even if many others aren't!) it was so lovely this morning to see the handkerchief tree coming into bud, along with the bright new green shoots, blossom and leaves bursting out along the hedgerows and trees all around, the birds singing in the sunshine ... gorgeous! I've loaded some pics on my Travel page - the High Weald in Spring is truly glorious.

Autumnal thoughts

5/10/2011

After the bright warm weather we were blessed with last week, I'm finding the autumn days quite soothing, with their soft grey pearly skies and muted temperature. Feeling quite wrapped up in thought this morning, I was diverted by the sight of beech and oak leaves falling in the wind from the long avenue of trees near Bore Place. Comforting to be reminded that whatever our small daily worries, the world carries on turning in its seasons, regardless. It recalled to me a favourite quote which I always find quite grounding, from An Autobiography and Other Essays by the historian GM Trevelyan: Once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow.

More on Birds

4/1/2010

When walking at Bough Beech, I sometimes bump into John P, who is a keen wildlife photographer in his spare time. I first met him when he kindly gave me some information on a relative for my Southborough War Memorial book. He took a fantastic photo of a stoat recently, and today he showed me two pictures he shot yesterday of a bittern at another reserve. Apparently, bitterns are really rare sightings for any birdwatcher, firstly since there are only 150 known breeding pairs in the UK, and secondly as they have very good camouflage – when they stand and throw their heads back in reed-beds they are incredibly hard to see. John was really thrilled to have had the opportunity to see this bird.

Just before the winter weather started, some opportunist thief or thieves stole all of the bird-feeders and seed from the bins in the nature-reserve. John heard about this and got online to members of the birdwatching forum he belongs to. They sent the hat round, and their generous donations were enough to buy a new load for the birds.

It’s been very beautiful today, with the small lake at Bough Beech frozen over like white icing on a pond-cake. When I got home a late Christmas card had arrived from my friend Ying in China, and it had two beautiful bird stamps on – scanned in here for your delight, dear reader!

Who flung pasta sauce at my car?

22/12/2009

When my friend Petra and I left work last week, we saw red splotches all over her car - she asked me what sort of birds made that kind of poo?! I said I thought it couldn't possibly be birds, and it must have been some late-night reveller on their way home the night before, who'd thrown what looked exactly like pizza or pasta sauce at her car when they'd finished their take-away. However, when I scraped the ice off my car the next morning, I saw that I had the same splotches on my little Citroen. We work in a beautiful part of the High Weald, near a nature reserve, and pass Mick the warden and other friendly bird-watchers every day on our lunchtime walk, so I asked what sort of bird might have left us both this decorative gift. The answer is waxwings, who have flown south from Scandinavia, and who have been eating rather a lot of holly berries! My birdwatching friends tell me we should feel honoured!