visit from the sparrowhawk

Looking out of the sitting room window this morning, I saw a pile of grey pigeon feathers by the little oak tree.  We must have had a visit from a sparrowhawk, for I can't think what else would stop to pluck its prey that close to the house.  A fox, if it managed to get a pigeon, would surely take it away into the woods, and as I know from those odd times when the cats have caught pigeons (I'm sure they were very old and ill pigeons) cats don't bother to pluck them.  I noticed yesterday afternoon that there were periods when the bird table was suddenly completely deserted, and wondered then if there were some predator about, though it could just have been one of the cats.  Some people who feed the birds get very upset when sparrowhawks take any of 'their' birds, but while I'd rather sparrowhawks ate pigeons than blue tits or robins (there are too many pigeons around here.  They cause damage to crops and gardens, and although it is a strictly subjective judgement, I find the noise they make quite annoying), I think to have raptors in your garden is thrilling.  The owls were calling vigorously last night, and I like them too.  They eat voles, which are the enemies of gardeners as they eat crocus bulbs and chew through bark and kill branches, if not whole young trees, so the vole's enemy is my friend, but I like owls anyway.

The wind had dropped and the air outside suddenly felt pleasant to breathe again.  Shoots of the dwarf iris are visible through the gravel, and the buds on the two shrubs I bought eight days ago, that have been sitting in the front garden waiting to be planted, have swelled visibly since I brought them home.  The world is stirring.  I would not call it spring, exactly, not on 8 January, and there could be cold weather to come (I do hope not.  It could cause a lot of damage, the way plants are coming out of dormancy), but things are on the move.  I never know how to respond to non-gardeners who blithely assume that of course in January I won't be doing anything outside.  Weather permitting, it is always a busy time of year, and the earth feels anything but dead.

As I was feeling stronger and the weather was kinder I did a run to the dump at Clacton.  It is just off Jaywick Lane, not the most salubrious spot.  There was an armed robbery at a farm shop in Jaywick Lane five days ago, and Jaywick itself was the most deprived place in England in 2010 according to the Multiple Index of Deprivation released last March.  That places it bottom among 32,482 neighbourhoods, based on statistics for income, employment, health, disability, crime, and living standards.  As the leader of Tendring District Council said, that's quite an embarrassment for somewhere only sixty miles from London.  Jaywick has a beautiful beach, and if history had worked out differently it could be a thriving retirement or commuter town.  Unfortunately, it has a legacy of very grotty (though historically interesting) housing left over from the interwar Plotlands movement, which by now are homes to some very troubled people.  Still, everybody at the dump was carefully putting their carloads of stuff into the right containers like exemplary citizens.  I did a woodland talk at Jaywick, a few years ago, and the audience were perfectly nice.  In fact, they gave me a donation for the charity above the going rate, which was generous but unnecessary, and I did notice on the letter they'd sent me confirming the booking that they received funding from Essex Council.  Groups which have to raise every last penny themselves from membership dues and fund raising events tend to be more frugal about how they spend it.

Then, as the trip to the dump hadn't prostrated me, I move more iris, and some asters.  I am absolutely sure that now is not the right time to be disturbing asters, but I had a clump that turned out to be shorter than I was expecting.  Either I hadn't read the label properly, or the description at the nursery where I bought them was wrong, so they'd ended up too far back in a bed for their diminutive height, and I wanted to move them to the front of that bed, and replace them with another taller aster that I'd optimistically tucked in by a rose bush in the front garden and which turned out to barely see the light of day, poor thing.  I really don't want to save all this rejigging until March or April, when the soil would be warming up, the asters starting into active growth, and it would be officially the right time to do the job.  I want to get those two beds weeded, replanted, mulched and sorted, ideally by the end of February.  I'll let you know if the asters survive the experience.