I’m never lonely in the garden. The bramble, nettle and wild mountain gorse surround me like enemy battalions as I try to put manners on them with slash hook and clippers; but pushing them back is also a kind of dialogue.
In the good weather earlier this month I was at it in a straw hat for hours. And hoping someone would come to visit and admire the work. I associate blue skies with old friends and neighbours sitting on the grass drinking wine. But no one darkened the door for an entire week. I couldn’t show off the garden or the good work I had accomplished, and all I had for conversation was a flock of birds.
One morning I met a little brown blackbird. She was on the ash tree, and the ash tree was heavy with berries, and a squadron of starlings were lined along the fence watching her, and watching me, and I suppose watching the berries which were ripening in the sun.
So I said, “Are you going to feast on that tree today?”
But the blackbird jerked her head in the negative.
“Today,” she declared, “myself and himself are taking a rest. The chicks are all fledged and flown, and on days like these we just like to scratch around in the leaves.”
“I saw the pair of you yesterday,” I replied.
“He’s looking well,” she said glancing up towards a higher branch, “with his sleek black feathers and his bright yellow bill. He likes to circle me a bit when we’re nibbling, and it keeps the strangers away.”
She took another glance at the starlings and I could see Mr Blackbird perched above her on the top branch.
“You’re looking well yourself Mrs Blackbird,” I declared, “with your soft brown feathers. I almost mistook you for a young one.”
“Oh it’s nice of you to say so,” she replied and she flew up high into the tree closer to himself.
He was as black as coal and held his head high and his yellow bill open as he poured velvet melodies into the air.
“Just listen to him!” Mrs Blackbird declared. “And those wings! If he were to stretch them they’d frighten the life out of any army.”
And she took a coy glance at his plumage.
“Would you like to hear a story?” I wondered.
“We couldn’t be arsed,” Mr Blackbird snapped, turning his rear end towards me and looking into the quarry.
“Don’t be so rude,” said Mrs Blackbird.
“Okay,” he said, turning full circle, and cocking his head to one side.
“Now shoot; what’s the story?”
“Well,” I began, “once upon a time a man went to a market, but never returned until a week later. Seven days and nights his wife watched from the end of the lane, wondering where he might be. Eventually on the seventh evening there was a knock on the door. He came in and without saying a word went for the flute that lay on the dresser and sitting by the fire he played the most beautiful tune she had ever heard. Where did you learn that, his wife wondered. But he didn’t know.”
Mrs Blackbird seemed to understand.
“And now I’m going to play that very same tune for you,” I declared as I opened the flute case and began to assemble the instrument.
“Oh dear,” Mrs Blackbird screamed, “he’s got an umbrella!”
“No,” her husband cried out, “that’s a weapon. I saw him beating nettles with something similar. Let’s get out of here immediately.”
The pair of them scattered off at the same moment, catching up with each other in the wind that rises up from the quarry, and off they went together over the trees before I was able to tell them that it was only a flute.
There was a time I would play the flute when the garden was full; at long ago parties until night met the morning. And sometimes I’d play during the day when I heard my neighbours’ spade hit stony ground in a nearby field and I knew that the sound of the flute would travel as far as the ridges he dug.
But my neighbour sleeps by the lakeshore now, and hears no more music at the gloaming or the dawning. And I play on my own without even a bird to give me an ear. I admit I’m no match for the blackbird, but I play what I can and imagine that someone is listening, somewhere beyond the wild mountain gorse.