to the Danish garden. Photograph: Ken Jack/Getty Images
Midwinter at the Danish summerhouse means chopping wood and feeding birds. There may be binoculars. There will be pastries, books and walks.
The wood is this year’s cutting for the next winters’ fires. The feeders give us joy, seeing our garden birds gather: bramblings, siskins, tits and finches. There are yellowhammers, and nuthatches walking upside down. There are woodpeckers flashing astonishing scarlet, black and white.
The smallest birds often feed on the ground, policed by officious blackbirds, an occasional greedy pigeon. The wrens and robins come close to the door.
I fill the feeders two or three times a day. It is deep winter after all. But the days are just a little longer now. The sea sunset calls later on our walks to the beach.
A pair of tits are scoping one of the nesting boxes. We spot their beaks peeking through. Deep December snow did for the too-early paperwhites but October’s bee-friendly seeds have taken and there is the promise of more early meadow this year.
The nice neighbour comes with his good axe. We chop till I am breathless and the chunkier, more twisted logs are split. The easier pile will wait. Meanwhile, we sit satisfied with a bottle of Christmas beer.
The red squirrels are more regular visitors now, swinging like acrobats through the pine and larch. The marmalade cat feeds well on bowls of Christmas goose fat, sheltered at the edge of the plot.
Three deer spot me and amble unhurried away. Henri gathers our chopped logs and adds them to the walls of wood. They will wait here for another winter or two.
It is my late brother Christopher’s birthday on our last full day, and mine today. I will take a moment to thank the gardening gods and my more lucky stars.
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