A couple of weekends ago, when staying with my mum in the Midlands, I offered her the chance to be chauffeured to places she couldn't otherwise get.
She chose to visit a cousin she hadn't seen for four years, near Warwick, a rather fine choice for me given that Margaret has a gorgeous garden heaving with wildlife. For starters, any garden that has Nuthatches visiting the feeders is going to get me excited.
It was also an experience having to navigate the Honeybees as they entered and exited the roof cavity above the kitchen: now there's something you don't encounter everyday! It was fascinating to see them queuing up, hanging patiently in a sort of mid-air queue like planes coming into Heathrow, waiting to get in the tiny entrance under the drainpipe. The colony has been there several years, so goodness knows how much honey is in the roof!
Margaret also has a perfect pond, with plenty of submerged and emergent vegetation for the dragonflies and damselflies.
And I was very taken with Margaret's old Berberis nana, a compact, thigh-high shrub covered with typical little lozenge-shaped Berberis berries.
Looking closely, I could see that something was taking a fancy to the foliage too. They were little caterpillars, looking rather like those of Large White butterflies that you find on cabbages, but these were of the Magpie Moth.
Margaret loves her wildlife, but is first and foremost a gardener. It reaffirmed for me how the two just go wonderfully hand in hand ̶ if you put in flowers, trees, shrubs, a pond and feeders, and if you stay calm when nature moves in (even if it comes in swarms!), you'll have a wonderful home for nature.
If you want to drop by my RSPB wildlife gardening blog, it is updated every Friday, and I'd love to see you there - www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/hfw