Last week was very sad day for the Hulks garden empire. We rent our house which is absolutely fine 99% of the time, not so when you return home and someone has gone to town with a chainsaw on your beautiful wildlife-friendly garden under the direction of the very absent (and therefore ill-informed) landlord. As I mentioned in a previous post I have befriended a rather territorial robin who has been hanging out in a large tree outside our bedroom window.
Now I have a real soft spot for not only my own garden but wildlife in general and I can’t stand manicured gardens with no room for real life. Another little known fact is that my first ever piece of writing to appear in print was an article about robins in BBC Wildlife Magazine’s Young Writers Competition. You may be getting the picture that I REALLY like robins. So imagine my dismay when I returned home to find my robin’s favourite tree lying across our garden path. Bad times.
After this sad episode the robin was nowhere to be seen. I decided drastic action was needed. As the natural goodies (spiders, bugs etc) had also had their homes removed by the chainsaw happy gardener our robin was also now not only traumatised by the butchering of the landscape but also low on snacks. Not one to give up on bird-kind I decided to head into town to do some shopping for my feathered friends. A couple of hours later and some time with a screwdriver and my paint box lead to what can only be described as the most bijoux robin house in the whole of Summertown, nay Oxford, nay THE WORLD.
I am very proud of it. And the good news is, so is my robin! He was re-sighted yesterday standing proudly atop his new house, puffing out his chest and saying (I like to think) ‘Check out my pad!’ And that is how order was restored to the Hulks garden! :)
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