Talking Point with Vicky Turrell: 'We could learn a thing or two from the blue tits'
They are unfurling fast as if they must hurry and there is no time at all to lose. The tiny buds have swollen already. Then miniature leaves have started to pull out. It is surely too soon, does nature know what it is doing? It must do, I tell myself it is March after all and we are well into meteorological spring. Even so just to be on the safe side I cover my plant at night when the temperature drops below zero. It stands there like a shivering ghost with its arms outspread daring the frost to come near.
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It is a tree peony and I have had it for some years but it did not do very well and so Mr T dug it up and put it in a pot where it withered even more. Now we have planted it out again and it is covered in the red sycamore-like buds from head to toe. I am holding my breath and hoping for the best.
I did the same for my little nest box. Held my breath, I mean, hoping that a bird would use it. I bought it at a little family garden centre. It looks home-made and is a hollowed out silver birch branch. Birds liked it immediately and it housed a family of blue tits, robins and secretive wrens. Then as if exhausted it fell off the kitchen wall. Now it is here with us like an old friend pinned onto a brand-new fence. Today I saw two blue tits moving in excitedly, going in through the hole and dropping to the floor then turfing the old debris out as if spring fever has got to them.
Have you been to your recycling centre recently since the rules were relaxed? We went yesterday and I could not believe the difference. Now we can go when we want, we seem to have got spring fever as well.
You know that when the tight booking rules were in place most people stopped going and there was only a trickle of cars but this time each bay was full, there was a quick turnover and we were quickly allocated a space. I wonder if people had been hoarding, hoping against hope that the Council would do a ‘U’ turn. It did and we were soon all off to recycle once more.
There is an update about my friend trying to sell her house when the buyer, with one week to completion, dropped out. She has a new buyer now and we have our fingers crossed. Buying a house seems such a cumbersome and nerve-wracking system in England, we could learn a thing or two from the blue tits.
