Shedscape

The shed roof is a favourite venue for sparrows, especially when they can bask in the sun (not that it's sunny this afternoon, but there are still a few hopping around).

An old teapot which I'd fixed in the trellis once served as a nestbox for a family of robins.

The large-leaved Canary Island Ivy got cut back when we repaired the shed some time ago but it's beginning to climb the trellis again. It started as a houseplant, a birthday gift from my brother. When it had outgrown the space in my studio I planted it outside to take its chances and it's now formed dense cover on the garden fence alongside an almost as luxuriant growth of a variegated ivy which has grown from a few pieces that I planted out from hanging baskets. Blackbird, wren and dunnock have built their nests on the stout snakelike stems of the Canary Island Ivy.

This morning we heard, then saw, a skein of 50-100 geese, probably pink-footed, heading north-west over the rooftops of Horbury. Perhaps they were heading for Martinsmere, a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk