of prey, it has made a sterling comeback and seemed a particularly regular fixture amongst the West Country’s cast of wild characters.
Watching wildlife is one of those lovely hobbies which rewards the time and effort you put in, and as we sat there being warmed by the sun’s rays, in addition to all the birds going about their business, another somewhat smaller creature that had just emerged from hibernation was also buzzing about. At this time of the year, bumblebees are easy to sex as it is only the queens who are equipped to survive the perils of winter, the rest of her colony having perished in the first frosts of the previous autumn. In a life cycle that beggars belief, the queen, having already been fertilised by the previous year’s males, then stores the sperm throughout winter. Upon emerging from hibernation the following spring, her first priority is to immediately replenish the body fats lost during the winter with the pollen and nectar from any suitable early-flowering plants. Using this food to develop her ovaries, it is only then that she will be in a position to fertilise the eggs. With the eggs ready to be laid, her next task is to find a suitable location for the nest to initiate her new colony, explaining why many people in early spring report bumblebees seemingly behaving erratically as they investigate nooks and crannies in walls and holes in lawns. All the queens are doing is looking for somewhere to set up home.
We leapt up to take a closer look, and we could clearly see her crawling around the bottom of the wisteria looking for a mouse-hole or any suitable cavity, and that she was a buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), one of the commonest of our bumblebees and also one of the earliest to emerge from hibernation. Bumblebees in Britain have had a tough time over the last 30 years, with two species having become extinct and around half the remaining species being recorded as in serious decline. Unfortunately it is no coincidence that during this period large swathes of our countryside have fundamentally changed from being places teeming with wildlife, to sterile monocultures with little space for the wild flowers and their attendant insects. However, throughout this dark, depressing period of environmental degradation, a ray of light has been created by gardens. Due to the extended flowering seasons gardeners often create and the bountiful sources of nectar and pollen on offer from all the different blooms, gardens have taken on the mantle of becoming extremely important habitats for these beleaguered insects. How appropriate then that our first bumblebee sighting of the year should be in the garden. Our planned trip to the garden centre that afternoon would now also need to include the purchase of a few more early-flowering, bee-friendly plants, as a garden can’t be called wildlife-friendly, unless it is full of the sound of buzzing bumbles!
Due to work commitments it was not until the following Friday that I was presented with any further opportunity to get my hands dirty in the garden. I downed my breakfast even faster than usual before bidding goodbye to Christina, who was off to work, for the whole day had been earmarked for a particularly manly job – commencing compost bin construction! But even before I would be able to start the measuring and sawing, the first task would be to actually build the Workmate, as it was only available for purchase in flat-pack form.
One of the prime reasons why historically I have tried to avoid shops like IKEA is that I hate building flat-packed furniture from instructions. To someone like me for whom DIY is a dirty acronym, the accompanying instructions can be the stuff of nightmares; these awful leaflets always assume dangerous levels of competence, are invariably poorly written and often contain diagrams that seem to bear no resemblance to the product you have just purchased. Despite the instructions being more of a hindrance than a help (Black & Decker please note), it was not until lunchtime – yes, a full three hours later – that at last I was ready to begin sawing up the timber.
Despite Mr Hamilton’s design initially looking complicated, it was easier to follow than I had expected, and with Christina’s father’s circular saw cutting through the timber like a hot knife through butter, I was soon giving the wood from the pergola and fence a second lease of life as precisely measured planks. With it being such a lovely, clear day my top half was soon stripped down to nothing more than a T-shirt as a result of the exertion – what a manly occupation compost-bin building was! Geoff’s design had incorporated wooden planks both on the back and either side, with small, vertical wooden battens at the front that would keep in place removable slats, which could then be slid out when the compost either needed to be turned or was ready to be removed and then used on our, as yet, nonexistent flower beds. The roof would then simply consist of a large piece of marine plywood to be purchased at a later date. The thinking behind the building of two bins was that it enabled one bin to be maturing while the other one was being filled with household waste and garden trimmings.
Standing back after a couple of hours, I was stunned with my progress. I had turned a large pile of partly rotten timber into a neat stack of perfectly sawn planks, and without any incidents either! I had also achieved something in my own mind of much more significance – I had put to bed my silly notion that I simply wasn’t up to anything more difficult than the simplest of practical tasks. There was also a huge feel-good factor associated with re-using and recycling rather than my usual course of action, which would have been to throw away the old timber then solve the ‘conundrum’ by buying something pre-constructed in a Thai sweatshop. Making my own was cheaper, better on the environment, would probably function better than anything I could have purchased in a store and had proved fun to build too. The only downside was that because the noise of the saw had driven everything elsewhere for the day, it had been the one occasion where I had neither seen nor heard any wildlife of note. I was sure they’d be back the following day, though.
There was only so much that could be achieved with two pairs of hands at such a crucial time of the year, so Christina had asked her family in Bath if they fancied turning up in force to help out on the Sunday. Kindly accepting our offer of a free lunch in return for a day’s labour, the work crew had agreed to arrive by mid-morning, giving Christina and I time to scribble down a quick list as to who would do what and, equally crucially, who would work with whom.
Three main jobs were targeted; these were primarily tasks which really had to be undertaken in winter so could not be delayed any further, but they were also activities that could be completed with a day’s hard graft. Firstly Christina and her technically minded father Graham would tackle the most technically demanding job of putting up trellis along the fascia of the garage and re-training the old wisteria and clematis back to some degree of order after their years of neglect. Christina’s sister Katy and her boyfriend Andy would be given what we considered to be the most fun job, which involved the planting of three apple trees and a damson purchased from Simon at the excellent local Chew Valley tree nursery. And finally Christina’s brother Jon and I would get stuck into the most physically demanding task of digging a trench along the fence line between our garden and Marjory and Dennis’s, into which we would be planting a combination of native whips, with the ultimate aim of producing a mixed-species hedgerow.
The team didn’t just bring manpower with them, but the weather too, as their arrival heralded the disappearance of the early morning fog to reveal wall-to-wall blue sky, with little or no wind to upset the status quo. Cracking straight on after a quick cuppa to admire the new sofa Christina and I had just bought (it was not just about the garden), the posse split up into their respective teams, to receive instructions where necessary, before tooling up and getting stuck in. Given the physical aspect of all the jobs, it wasn’t long before all team members were peeling off fleeces and coats as the mantra ‘cast no clout, fore May be out!’ was also cast aside. Most importantly of all, it was delightful to see how much everyone was enjoying the work – clearly audible in between the grunts created by the swinging of the pick-axe or the whine from the drill was the laughter from chirpy banter. There was also a fair amount of spade-leaning too as each group took regular breaks to check up on the progress elsewhere.
The jobs were nevertheless far from plain-sailing, as what we thought initially might have been the most straightforward task ended up being the most problematic when Andy suddenly hit concrete while digging the hole for the first apple tree. Andy’s misfortune had been to hit the subterranean concrete foundation of the furthest