No I’m not Lazy just busy. After making beds, breakfast, lunches, dressing children, dressing myself, supervising teeth brushing, tidying up, planning the dinner, checking my emails, checking my diary, feeding the cats, taking the kids to school, checking the time of ‘that’ meeting, driving to work, planning my blog for the day, thinking about the countless other things that regularly fall off my to do list, and all before I start work at 9am... Volunteering gets harder to fit in.
So it is with relief that I get involved with the Big Garden Birdwatch every January. Far enough from Christmas that I’m back in the old routine but close enough to New Year to be included in my new year’s resolutions and boost in purpose (more recycling, get out more, help the environment...) Big Garden Birdwatch represents to me an opportunity to be involved in something that really helps The RSPB monitor our birds and wildlife, gets the kids involved and I can do it all in one hour without having to upset the delicate balance of chaos that is the rest of my working day.
During Big Garden Birdwatch two year’s ago we had an abundance of birds in our garden – house sparrows, a robin, blackbirds, starlings and a collared dove to name a few. Last year not so good on account of the snow melting two days before the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. The kids really wanted to put down everything we had seen while the snow was forcing them to our feeders. We resisted the temptation but were suitably gutted.
I’m always preparing myself for the sound of groaning when I turn off the xbox and TV for 1 hour to entice them to do something else (who knew kids hated shopping so much) but strangely this never seems to happen with the Big Garden Birdwatch, after a few minutes of fidgeting they settle down to outdo each other’s list before fighting over who will enter the results online.
Once done, everyone is off on the rest of their chores, as it’s the weekend the husband is outside sorting out our fence or some other house item that requires his attention, I’ve got washing, tidying, shopping, sorting, homework and a dozen other things to do, the kids are back to squabbling but I can put a big tick against volunteering and it didn’t require the coordination of MI5 to get us out the house to do it.
If you’re interested in helping out for 1 hour this weekend you can sign up on our website: www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch
Enjoy
Rhoda
Want to Volunteer? Ask me!