"And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?"
Yes, it's that time again, a chance to reflect, to wonder where the year went to, but to remember the good times in the garden.
For me, I've had a great year, so excuse me while I indulge in a little bit of retrospection about some of my wildlife gardening highlights of the year, and I hope it will stir some happy memories for you too.
Getting to design a feature garden for Gardeners World Live 2013 has got to be up there for me. Did you get to create something in your garden that you're proud of?
This year I delved deeper into the world of micromoths than I had previously, and found them to be more fascinating than I had dared imagine. It is so rewarding when a creature like this turns up in your moth trap...
...and you find that it lives in hawthorn hedges. Well, the only garden in my vicinity with a hawthorn hedge is mine, and I planted it, so I felt proud to have given this creature a home! (The moth is Acrobasis advenella, by the way).
I was wowed once more by the winter garden at Anglesey Abbey, and enjoyed the Piet Oudolf gardens at Pensthorpe, but I always find there are just as pleasing moments in one's own garden. This year, one such moment was when brief snows came in March, here forming a pure blanket around my Crocus tommasinianus.
Out in the countryside, I was entranced to see Swallowtails on the Norfolk Broads in June. There are some gardeners who live near the Broads who get Swallowtails visiting their gardens, which must be amazing. It was great to see Yellow Flag being used as a nectar source...
But perhaps one of my favourite memories was at a Bed & Breakfast I stayed at in Norfolk. The owners wouldn't have thought of themselves as 'wildlife' people at all, but they were visited daily by a pair of Blackbirds and this was clearly one of the delights in their life. As I was presented with great fry-ups at breakfast each morning, so 'their' Blackbirds would arrive outside the patio windows waiting for their little handful of raisins.
It was a reminder that wildlife can touch all our lives, and where better to have those moments than in your own garden?
Thank you for tuning in this year to read my ramblings, and here's to a fantastic 2014 for us all.
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
Wow, what an inspiring story to hear on New Year's Day, Karin! I'd love to hear updates as the wildlife garden emerges.
This year a very small group of us wrestled with the council for a plot of very expensive council land near our high street and the station where Crossrail will stop, and we won! We'll be creating a wildlife garden for the community. We might only have the lease for 3 years but we aim to make it so wonderful the community will demand it remain a green spot.
I also built a cold frame from found elements (bricks, unused styrofoam plates and sheets, and a shower stall door) for cuttings I've taken from all the bushes and small trees I could reach around here. And I collected so many 'weed' seeds that I now have to spend a lot of time figuring out what to do with them! I'm currently macerating berries from a large bush over 100 years old which was blown over by the winds last week.
This year I found hedgehog poo in the backgarden - which makes it a very good year!
And I read all of Adrian's Wildlife Gardening book and took notes so I can pass on the knowledge to our community gardening group. And I joined the community here :-)