The First "View From The Summerhouse" - July 11th 2010

A View From The Summerhouse

This is my first ever blog, so, dear Reader, do, please, bear with me, as I’m bound to get something wrong!

Why have I called my blog “A View From The Summerhouse”? Well, because I’m sitting in our summerhouse as I write, watching the evening sky darken as sunset approaches, and having heard on the weather forecast that rain is finally on its way for us, tonight, and this may well be the last day of this - very long - summer’s warm, dry, spell… or at least until later next week.

We got this summerhouse last Autumn, and since late Springtime this year have made good use of it on fine days. Soon, it will have electricity laid on, so I can use my laptop on mains, and have a table lamp on for when the evenings draw in but it’s still warm enough to sit out.

The view from the summerhouse is rather pleasant, we think, in a “townie” kind of way. We live on the north of what, for the past forty years, has been optimistically called “The New City of Milton Keynes”; firstly by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, who planned and built most of MK, then by MK Borough Council, and latterly, since becoming a ‘Unitary Authority’, autonomous, rather than part of Buckinghamshire, (which, of course, we are still in!) by Milton Keynes Council.

So… back to the view…

Once I’ve got the drop on this blogging lark, I shall post a photo of our tiny garden, and its summerhouse, but for now, a brief description. About thirty feet square, with a wild-life pond in the centre, currently lush with rosebay willow herb, purple loosestrife, and watermint.

Our home is a terraced bungalow, with the back garden south facing, so we get the sunshine most of the day; and the summerhouse is in the far left corner, facing west, and so it is that here I am, with the sun just set, this July evening. But the sky is greying as the rain clouds approach from the south on a gentle breeze. A blackbird has been singing all evening. A gorgeously velvet song, he’s been with us all year, appearing first when the snow lay thick during the coldest winter in MK for many years, and we had two bird tables and many hanging bird feeders, stocked up with all sorts of goodies for our lovely feathered friends. Robins, Wrens, Chaffinches, Dunnocks, Blackbirds, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, even a Spotted Woodpecker and a Goldfinch made an appearance before that long cold spell was out! And we were rewarded for all our feeding with blue tits nesting in our boxes, and the blackbird bringing his fledglings “in to see us”, this spring, as the pair raised first one, and now a second brood, in the trees which stand behind our garden.

What was left of the last of the sunset has now disappeared, and the sky is a dull grey, with a ‘mackerel’ cloud effect in darker grey - the portent of rain approaching. But still I’m kept company by “our” blackbird singing happily and now echoed by another farther down the tree line behind our garden.

Oh happy days! Warm and tranquil, hardly but a touch of breeze, but oh so much cooler than the past few nights when temperatures stayed at the dizzy heights of 15, or 16 degrees Celsius even in the coolest of the night!

Next door’s cat has just jumped onto the top of the fence: he hasn’t seen that I’m sat in the summerhouse, or he’d have thought twice before dropping down into our garden. It’s not that I don’t like him, or pussy-cats in general; on the contrary, but next door’s cat is a true hunter, and had the very first blue tit fledgling from our nest box this spring. Aha! He’s spotted me now I’ve moved in my chair… and off he goes, back over the fence.

It’s the World Cup Final this evening on television, and our next door neighbours are watching it. I can tell because with this hot weather, we’ve all had our back doors and living-room doors open to our gardens, so I can hear their shouts as the football match progresses. And their cat has took flight to home and is being welcomed in by his “mummy”. I have no interest in football. Indeed, I think it has become grossly over rated, over paid, and over bearing. There never seems to be a moment’s respite from it on the TV and radio news, or in the newspapers… footballers, footballers wives, who’s playing who, and why it’s SO important… Ugh! Here we are, at the height of the cricket season in England, yet hardly a mention of it – just the blasted World Cup… and in a few weeks time, the next football season starts in Britain and all we’ll hear for the next 10 months will be football, football, football… aaaaggghhh!!!

And that was the view from the summerhouse today.