A little birdhouse in my soul...

Normally I have a big project over the Easter weekend, but this year with a baby and an election, I have only really managed to repair and reposition our birdbox which had been battered by the weather (or a trespassing tree climber). I've never been that sure how much birdboxes help given the number of perfectly decent trees around, but we'll see if anyone takes up the offer.

I was devastated to hear that long tailed tits had a hard winter and their numbers are down - they're my all-time favourite bird and bring joy to my heart with their cheeky antics. So I was delighted when four flitted through the garden on Saturday. I like to think that our feeders gave them the edge over the crushing winter we had this year*.

So apart from that, I've redosed our lawn with organic food, but I haven't managed to get a full crop of compost for mulching having emptied all the heaps/containers last year. I may turn the "hedge heap" but I'm not expecting much quality compost there.

*btw not only was Jan the warmest globally on the satellite record, but Feb was second warmest on record. We just got someone else's weather.

The greener, greener grass...

Lawns are great for allowing water to soak away (important given potential flooding of rivers in a warmer climate), but traditional lawn maintenance can be quite resource intensive in terms of energy for mowing, water and fertiliser. For the first, we've got a push mower and the second hasn't been a problem yet - that wet August last year watered it in without intervention from us and the garden is reasonably shaded.

For the last one we got some organic lawn food (see above). This is not one for the veggies - it seems to mainly consist of by-products from the meat industry (blood, hoof and feathers) and it does have a faint whiff the day you put it down. But a week later and the grass really is looking thicker and greener. Nice one.