This post could also be titled December Mud. Take your pick. The fact is, us delta dwellers cannot see the one separated from the other. When it is dry here, we walk on soil turned to concrete even a pick axe has a hard time breaking. When it rains, we slog through mud up to our ankles.
Attuned as I am to the seasons, I aim for that window between concrete and mud to do my gardening. Some years I am lucky, and the window lasts for a couple of weeks. Other years it slams shut on me within days. The year 2025 will go down in my personal gardening history as 'practically impossible'.
In February 2025, usually the month my gardening year starts in earnest, my soil was okay for digging, except I had no digging planned, as I am a 'no-dig gardener'. That practise has turned my utterly depleted soil to one that boasts fungi and invertebrates again. Hurray! Instead, I sowed seeds in the greenhouse, ready for those seedlings to be planted out in April/May. Except, it never rained from the beginning of March onwards, and when I wanted to plant out the annuals and new perennials, I could not get a spade in the ground.
Okay, long story extremely short: it was a total failure, and took me waiting (and watering pots) until the end of October (!) before I could finally plant out the few surviving perennials. The annuals were dead by then.
And now it is December, and we have had weeks of heavy rain, and my soil has turned to mud. I did put some bulbs and those few survivors into the ground. And now I play a waiting game. Will they settle? Or rot?
Is it all doom and gloom then? No, of course not! I travelled (by bus) to Rotterdam yesterday, and saw to my immense joy a group of storks (Ciconia ciconia) perched on the motorway lights. One on every light mast, sitting relaxed high above the busy traffic, with one bewildered cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), no doubt asking himself what company he had landed himself in. A bit like myself having the same thought within a group of football supporters, I imagine.
If you have read some of my posts (or book, where jackdaws play a major role), it will come as no surprise to you that the sight of those large birds made my heart leap. I am not a proper twitcher, but I do enjoy watching birds. I imagine they had just flown in from Africa, and were now resting a bit before finding a nice more permanent perch.
In the area I live in, there is a nature reserve called Breede Water which hosts loads of cormorants, but also spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia), and the latter are thriving in larger and larger numbers. And on the next island over, they have spotted flamingos.
Very close to my house there is a waterway, where herons (Ardea cinerea) congregate, and have a roost in the oaks and shit all over the path. A few years back I painted one. Despite the shitting, I do like them, and Puck greets them with a friendly 'woof!'. They usually greet back with a furious ear-splitting screech.
My appartment is overlooked by the birds that use the flat roof opposite as their perch. I watch them watching me. Gulls (Larus argentatus) love to sit on the modern chimney, and also nest there. And every year a couple of oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) swoop in screeching, in April, and nest on the pebbles of the roof. As I am typing this, that herring gull is watching me very attentively, as if he feels I am writing about him.
Small birds visit the food I put out for them on my balcony. Mostly tits, both coal (Parus major) and blue (Cyanistes caeruleus), but the occasional finch (Fringilla coelebs) lands as well. The jackdaws (Corvus monedula) and magpies (Pica pica) try, but they cannot perch anywhere to get at the food. Mind you, both kinds try to hang from the pot of bird butter I put out, and there is one magpie that has got the hang of it, so to speak, and gulps down a beak full before he falls away. All birds are used to Puck and me, and ignore us. Puck tolerates the jackdaws when on the balcony, but she shows them who is queen when we are walking. They in turn dive bomb us during their breeding season! Last June one of them drew blood, and I was forced to evade their corner for weeks. I do not mind one bit, I enjoy their noisy gregarious murder.
Right. This blog has become a mix between garden and birds. The thing is, there is not a lot to tell about my garden right now...It is mostly very wet. And the sky is mostly very grey, and wet. And when I do venture out to the allotment I get very wet...
Whereas birds show themselves, now that they find fewer insects and seeds in the hedgerows. When I walk Puck in the dark at 6 a.m., there are birds singing. Just a few, but all the same! Their song lifts my spirits.
Totally off-subject, I would like to convey my condolences to my readers in Hong Kong. That devastating fire of Nov.26/27 was shown on our TV, and I was shocked. I am wishing you well.
Take care,
Renée Grashoff
