One small 'Earth Day' statistic :
there are six hundred million fewer birds
in Europe than there were in 1980.
My neighbour has eliminated bees and butterflies
along with other flora and fauna
in his now-dismal patch of garden.
No swallows have arrived this year,
no swifts and no house-martins.
This area used to be dense with foliage all year round.
Though the cherry and hazel trees remain, shrubs have been removed,
including a fine 'Snowball Bush'.
Note the remains of an illegal bonfire, and the decking
for eating outside. Needless to say, there is also a barbecue.
Bees and ladybirds have gone elsewhere, or died off.
Though the cherry and hazel trees remain, shrubs have been removed,
including a fine 'Snowball Bush'.
Note the remains of an illegal bonfire, and the decking
for eating outside. Needless to say, there is also a barbecue.
Bees and ladybirds have gone elsewhere, or died off.
8 comments:
Because there are fewer nesting birds, I have heard just one frustrated cuckoo.
Does your neighbour subscribe to the lovely German aesthetic
of the non-garden garden, locally known as a "Garten des Grauens"
as shown here?:
https://www.garten-landschaft.de/gaerten-des-grauens/
M.
'Horror gardens' - a play on words, since grau means 'grey'.
No, a different scenario. I live on the edge of a little, 'protected' leafy glen with a pond. The area below my house-on-a-little-cliff was, when I came, abandoned vegetable gardens with a few hazel and cherry-trees, which became covered with violets and other wild plants - and sheltering brambles: an excellent environment for insects.
Five years after I arrived, the long-empty house (down the lane) to which the gardens belonged was finally bought. The new owners, arrogant and ignorant schoolteacher townies from Marseille wanting a holiday home, had the whole quarter-acre strimmed, then sprayed with herbicide (illegal). A few suburban shrubs were planted in the ensuing desert. Trees are trimmed and the trimmings burned (also illegal).
Every now and then, a hired and suitably-clad destroyer comes with his strimmer to keep the desert sadly 'neat and tidy'. People wielding strimmers, of course, tend not to know a primrose from a peony.
There is more life in the average graveyard than there is in the garden you describe, at least where the graveyard is allowed to be a little scruffy...
Living among the Spießbürger [people who put the 'petty' before the petty bourgeois] of Germany, I've consistently made one observation: All loud gardenwork, first and foremost mowing, happens in synch or with a slight delay around the neighbourhood. Is this a matter of courtesy to keep the sonic nuisance confined to a concentrated time slot every week? Keeping up with the Joneses? Virtue signalling to show one is an ardent grass mower, too? Coincidence? A human universal?
Alas, letting the plants just grow into thicket is anathema.
M.
The French are quite opposite to the Germans. They tend to stagger mowing and strimming and that sort of thing so as to annoy people for longer. It's strange that the first Socialist Commune was in Paris, because the French are unbelievably (but charmingly) egotistical and self-admiring.
The Angst of the Germans and the English simply wouldn't occur to them. Baudelaire's Angst was entirely selfish and self-regarding. Despite their history of genocide outstripping that of Germany and perhaps Britain, they think they are the most civilised and subtle people in the world. This may have something to do with Louis XIV, because Montaigne was very self-questioning - and a lovely person. I recommend the delightful and generous account of his physically-painful Travels in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
Alas! we are slipping into a (final) period of Universal I-phone Ignorance.
PS Friday night - Are they mowing in the rain in Bayern ? This is one of my favourite websites,especially when electric storms approach Occitania:
https://map.blitzortung.org/
I've just looked for poems titled "After the rain."
They are all wrong.
After the rain the town goes vroooOooooom.
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