Daily, weekly and annual routines

Winter at Boxdorf village pond

It is nice to be reminded just how important our daily, weekly, and even annual routines are. 

An early morning cup of tea on the balcony, a weekly visit to a friend, or the seasonal routines of blowing eggs for Easter, making cards for Christmas meeting for an autumn family walk, all remind us that our world is turning nicely.

At my work the children often remind me how much they depend on their own routines' staying constant when they arrive at the group and ask- ‘Where is Évi?’ or ‘Where is Susie?’ when one of us is ill or working elsewhere.

They always notice when another piece of our new kitchen is installed, and have a hundred questions to ask and need to look through the new cupboards and drawers to make sure that all the old things that they are used to are still there.

When a school assistant is ill, or a new replacement begins, it is the first story we hear before coats are removed.

If Mum or Dad is away at work, if a favourite teacher has left the school, or a sibling has gone off on a skiing trip, these changes are also reported. These changes are often the reasons for differences in children’s moods and the children know, without really knowing, why it is important to report these changes in routine to us and to their friends – we discuss them over lunch, their friends ask questions and we all learn from the situation. We learn how to adapt and learn new ways of coping with what comes along in our paths through life.

Spring at Boxdorf village pond

As conductors we must remember that we also have clients who cannot rush in the room and ask where someone is, tell us that brother is away all week and that he is sorely missed, tell us that Dad has had to fly off on a business trip, or that Grandma is poorly and now in hospital. Many of our children cannot report these routine-changing events to us so we must remember that when a child is sad, does not want to eat, seems restless, unmotivated, agitated or unhappy that perhaps their routine has also changed and perhaps we should ask about it in order to indicate in some way that we understand.

This of course happens positively too. Positive changes in routines also have to be discussed and changes in behaviour noted and often praised.

I am the first person to initially react negatively to change. I have improved as I get older but still my initial reaction to a change in my routine is fear, worry, it can even be panic. This may only last for the few seconds that it takes for me to tell myself everything is fine in its new way, or it can last for days and weeks depending on the degree of change.

I think it is one of the reasons that being a conductor suits me, because although my work is so varied and colourful there is always that underlying routine in it that we need to develop for the clients and it does me good too.

I have work in a new city, a new family, a new group of adults, new colleagues, but when the work starts I have to build into it a routine and this is very calming and reassuring and spreads its influences out onto my personal life.

Summer at Boxdorf village pond

What made me start thinking about routines today?

It was when I sat down to read the newspaper with my early morning cup of tea, the one that always tastes best, and I realised how much I had missed this routine and thought perhaps that this was why I never seemed to get going on Saturdays recently.

At last … my Guardian Weekly had arrived and just in time for Saturday morning breakfast as it always used to.

I cancel it when I go away and it usually starts appearing again the week after I return home.

But after my Christmas and New Year break it did not appear in my letter box – week after week.

At first I did not realise why, I thought I must have told them the wrong start-date, but eventually I wrote an email and was told that they had forgotten to restart delivery. My routine had been disturbed and oh how I had missed it.

Each morning as I got ready for work I took Chekhov or one of my other Christmas books with me, all quite heavy tomes, instead of compactly folding the Weekly into my pocket.

Rotating routines

My new routine starts again on Monday, the one that I have to prepare for with lots of sleep in the preceding weeks because it exhausts me.

For three weeks I have been working with the stroke group in the mornings but next Monday I begin three weeks with the Kindergarten children. This work starts an hour earlier but my day still stretches on well into the evenings as always. I find this work tiring but I have developed this as part of my routine so that despite always catching a cold from the always runny noses, I love it.

The dependable routine of nature always accompanies everything we do and makes its own changes along the way. I am happy to see that when I get up a earlier next week I will now be able to enjoy some daylight before I start work and perhaps in the evenings too, on my way home, if I am lucky to get away on time!

Autumn at Boxdorf village pond

My old much-loved, and much-needed, routine

The snow has almost melted and the days might warm up soon if it does not snow again, then I can begin the other routine that I love so much – cycling to work. 

Despite the massive amount of road-works on my route for the extended tramway I am determined to ride my way into the routine of summer, with nature gazing, picking four-leaved clovers and photographing the sunset all to look forward to!

I am glad that nature with its seasons ring the changes but still keeps to its daily routine.

PS

I chose the photographs published here to illustrate my early morning routine of observing the seasonal changes at our local village pond,  not to illustrate the changing rhythms of nature that also affect our lives, that is something else to be dealt with another time.

More chapters in the ‘blackbird-babies-upbringing’ saga

One of my birthday cards

My balcony from below

The baby blackbirds are almost ready for off!

I made an unscheduled flight back to the UK last weekend this meant that the blackbird family who are living on my balcony were left in peace. Although when I left only three of the four eggs had hatched when I returned five days later only two of the naked, dinosaur-like creatures had developed into mini-birds with a few feathers forming.

I have spent the last week peering at the babies between feeds and today these lovely fluffy creatures with wide yellow beaks are hopping up and down the window-box as they squawk for their food.

Mummy blackbird remains relaxed as I sit outside with my coffee and newspaper but the Dad is still giving me a hard time even when I am only looking out of the shut window in the moment that he arrives with a worm. With Dadmuch more active in the feeding with Mum taking a well earned rest, I am being extra careful not to frighten him off although it is really difficult with all the racket going on in and around the tree to keep away from the action.

I suspect that the offspring will be gone in a couple of days. I hope that they fly off rather than fall out. They are getting precariously near to the edge of the box at the moment as they stretch to be first in line for grubs.

Here is a photographic update on the blackbird babies

June 25th, 2012

June 26th, 2012

July 3rd, 2012

July 4th, 2012

July 7th, 2012

July 8th, 2012

Sunday July 8th, 2012, and Dad blackbird is still shouting at me, even through the shut window!

A very, very short motion picture!

The Flying-Conductor is home to roost

Between 14.30 and 17.00, June 10th, 2012

Norwich peregrines and Nürnberg blackbirds

I am home to roost having done what seemed like around-the-world-in-eighty-days but was only in fact popping-around-Europe-in-fifteen —

Nürnberg-Dusseldorf-London-Norwich-Birmingham-Sheffield-Norwich-London-Dusseldorf-Nürnberg-Vienna-Nürnberg! 

While in England I saw my Dad, Aimee and the rest of the family, a few friends and the Norwich Peregrines. I risked travelling by train and got out from the Norfolk sticks to the Midlands and back without any delays, despite being evacuated from one station due to a fire! 

Unfortunately I saw the sea only from the plane and the Queen only on the television but I experienced Viennese waltzing, and Klimt and Schiele paintings, first hand in Austria! 

I was glad to have caught sight of the Norfolk birds and experienced some Queen’s Jubilee fever, even though I missed all the street parties. By the time the British began partying in the streets I was enjoying Viennese culture and eating Dobos Torte with a picture of Klimt’s painting, The Kiss, on the top.

More about the travels later, this is supposed to be about birds.

Peregrines

I tried my best to follow the life of the peregrines at Norwich Cathedral after I left Norwich but I had only seen a few glimpses of the chick’s darkening feathers on the webcam and did not have the opportunity to read the messages on the Forum for several days. Therefore I had not realised earlier that there were such concerns for the health of the smallest of the three chicks.

As I tuned in to the peregrines on Sunday morning I thought at first that one of the chicks had already flown the nest, Sunday being the day that the experts in the peregrine-watching tent in Norwich had told me is the expected fledging day. I soon realized that one bird, the smaller of the two male birds, had died in the early hours of the morning. The remaining two have since spent most of the day flapping around their nest-box and on the ledge, preening away the last fluffy feathers and receiving food from the parent birds.

http://www.hawkandowl.org/NR/exeres/FC55CF4D-985C-4C84-BC88-D665F12EFEC0

https://secure.onestopcms.co.uk/OneStopCMS/Core/TemplateHandler.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={1E4880C9-87B5-4FA6-8061-0D77FDF53EBD}&NRORIGINALURL=%2fTrustAtWork%2fConservation%2fUrbanperegrines%2fNorPeregrionesForum%3fpage%3d1&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyLoggedIn&page=1&site={10878011-eb74-47f9-9a81-75ce0e6ab32d}

Blackbirds

When I had come home for a few hours at the beginning of the week, to swap suitcases before heading off to Austria, I was nearly hit, full in the face, by a frightened blackbird as I stepped out on to my tiny balcony.

I noticed that the blackbirds that I have often seen hopping around in the trees nearby had been digging up the herbs from my plant pots. Last spring I had prevented these birds from messing up the patio below with their pickings from my window-boxes by quickly planting strawberries and geraniums. The birds left the boxes alone this year but it appeared that they had hopped down to a lower level to help themselves to nest-building material from the pots on the wooden, decking floor.

Before I continued with my around-Europe-in-fifteen-days trip I cleared up the mess, watered the plants, and forgot about it.

On Sunday morning I went out to see what was happening in my tree-decked balcony-world outside the kitchen door. I had checked whether I needed to water anything and pulled off a few dead leaves before I discovered a nest in the window-box at the furthest point from the door, snuggled in the soil beyond the geraniums where one of last year’s strawberries had been struggling to survive. 

It is a blackbird’s nest and it belongs to those messy blackbirds that hop around my balcony picking at my pots!

It was empty when I discovered it but that was no surprise to me as it was so newly built. 

There had been no sign of it at the beginning of the week. It is quite unbelievable that in the space of just five days such an architectural wonder can be built by two small birds. 

I wondered whether I had disturbed the owners of the nest with my comings and goings since I returned home to my own roost, and I feared that they may abandon it. I checked at regular intervals but there was no sign of life, then at lunch-time today I saw a beak and a tail poking up amongst the geranium leaves. 

A few hours later I peered out of the window and noticed that the nest was empty again. Oh dear, had I disturbed them when I opened the fridge door? Or when I put on the light? 

What a distraction these new neighbours will be if they decide to stay.

As there was no one on the nest to disturb I opened the door to let in the fresh air and I had another peep at the beautifully lined, perfectly round and very clean and tidy nest. Low and behold, during the short time that the nest had been occupied, bright blue egg-number-one had been laid. It is in the middle of the nest and there hardly looks to be enough room for any more to join it. But more there are sure to be as no one is keeping this one warm yet. 

The egg is not oval like a hen’s egg but fatter at one end and much more pointy at the other. So when it rolls it will roll around in a circle inside the nest.

An hour or so later, in a pause from peregrine-watching on the Internet, I checked up on the blackbird’s nest. I noticed the mum bird perched on a branch beside her nest watching me through the door with one beady eye, with the other one on her beautiful egg in the just-as-beautiful nest. She seemed not to be afraid of me only a little protective.

‘That’s nice’, I thought, ‘She is not afraid, perhaps I really will have lots of company again this summer’.

I am not sure whether when summer comes and the cold dreary days like today pass by, that I will be just as happy to have company because I doubt that I will be able to sit outside in my chair that is placed all of twelve inches, that’s thirty centimetres, from the nest, but it is exciting enough to put up with it for a few weeks.

This is the first time that I have seen bird’s eggs this closely since I was a child when my dad lifted me up to see a nest full of blue-tit’s eggs in one of the many nest-boxes in our garden.

PS

It is Monday morning and the Norfolk peregrines are still on their nesting platform, and as I write there is still only one egg in the Nürnberg blackbirds’ nest. I have every hope that there will soon be two eggs as Mrs Blackbird has just returned!

PPS

Before posting Mrs Blackbird had laid egg number two!

12 o'clock, midday, June 11th, 2012

Peregrines in Norwich

Watching from Germany

I have been enjoying my daily visits to the Norwich peregrines via the Hawk and Owl Trust’s webcam that provides such a great view of the nesting platform and the city below the Cathedral‘s spire –

http://www.hawkandowl.org/NR/exeres/FC55CF4D-985C-4C84-BC88-D665F12EFEC0

I have switched on at about 6.30 each morning since 14^th May when the first egg hatched and even at this early hour I usually caught the birds enjoying breakfast. I have tuned in again on most evenings when I have returned home from work to enjoy the banter and questions and answers on the Peregrine Forum, even contributing now and then myself.

On a couple of occasions I have even tuned in at work to show both the adults and children who attend my groups the Peregrine action at Norwich Cathedral.

I, my family, my clients, and also many friends who I have talked to about the return after two-hundred years of peregrines to Norwich, are captivated by these amazing creature. Our enthusiasm has sparked off many conversations these last few weeks.

I am thoroughly enjoying communicating about the birds with my sister, each of us keeping up to date on the webcam and reading the website information. We discussed the progress of the chicks as if we were experts and keenly followed events surrounding them such as their recent ringing.

Although it can all still be seen on the Hawk and Owl Trust’s website but I was so excited when I realised that I would be able to see these fastest creatures in the world performing live. 

Watching for real

I am on a flying visit to Norwich and this afternoon, after a morning weeding the parsnips, armed with binoculars and camera, I jumped on my old bike to cycle the ten minutes to the Cathedral Close.

As I walked up The Close from Pull’s Ferry I immediately spotted the platform and both the male and female birds perched high, one on each side of the nesting platform keeping an eye out for danger, or for the next dinner! The falcon was on the right, perched on a crocket just above the nesting and the tiercel almost at the tip of the spire on the third crocket from the top, one looking westwards and the other eastwards over the city.

On the green in the Cathedral Close there is a manned information desk and in a small enclosed area there are half a dozen telescopes for public use, positioned to view the tower. 

Help is on hand to spot the birds and to provide answers to questions.

Now that the parent birds are no longer sitting on the chicks to keep them warm, they can be seen sitting preening themselves and on guard. They leave the chicks for longer and longer periods of time, attending from afar, and with the temperature now soaring well into the high twenties it is more likely that the chicks need to be shaded by the wings of their parents to keep cool rather than for their warmth.

Occasionally the head of a chick can now be seen from below, peering over the edge of the platform. This causes much concern to some of the followers on the website forum, but we are assured that the chicks will not come over the side until their feathers are able to support them in flight. As the experts said to me when I visited the Cathedral these are after all cliff and mountain-side dwellers and they should know what they are doing!

I am not here in Norwich for long and unfortunately by the 8^th June, the expected date that the chicks will fly from the nest, I will be long gone. I am going to make the most of the live action and jump on my bike as often as I can before I leave. 

I would just love to see the adult birds in flight so I will try to visit early in the morning or late evening, the time when they are most active, hunting for food and arriving at the nest to feed the young. But if I do not see the parent birds flying it does not matter too much because all I wanted was to see the actual platform and chat to the wardens and just feel a little bit closer to the peregrine action, and say thank you for the great enjoyment that I have had from this project.

Upbringing and flowers

Presents for friends

Recently I spend five Euros on some flowering plants as a small present for my friend. She can plant them in her garden or in pots on her large patio. I had not seen this friend for a long time and I wanted to bring her something that would last, and plants for the garden are always a hit with her, just as they are with many of my friends.

Presents for myself

On the way home from work on Friday I took my time. It was warm, still twenty-five degrees at six in the evening, with no wind. I stopped every now and then to pick some of the hedgerow flowers. 

Once, last year, I counted over twenty different species of flower as I whizzed along the cycle track! Unfortunately I could name them all only in English. I know only a few of the names in German and Hungarian but many of their English names are embedded in my memory since childhood when their strangeness evoked such wonderful images in my mind. Toadflax was always a favourite, with ragged-robin, old-man’s-beard and dog-rose all following close behind, probably because of their association with other living creatures.

Upbringing

This morning as I looked at those flowers that I had picked for myself I thought about the peaceful minutes in the evening sunshine after work that I had spent collecting them, I also pondered on the nice hours that I had spent with my friend. Then I started to think about upbringing. I thought about upbringing in general and about my own upbringing and how it influences my work and, of course, my private life.

It is what I do. It is how I was brought up!

I picked flowers from the hedgerows for myself because that is what I do. 

I have always picked wild flowers; and now I own the vase in which my Grandmother always placed my offering of red-dead-nettle, the only flower that grew between our house and hers! 

My sister always used to tell me to hurry along and stop picking weeds. I never did hurry and I never arrived empty-handed!

When my Mum was alive she always placed her own special vase on the kitchen window sill, ready for my arrival, and now my Dad does the same once he had learnt that that is what I like to do.

Mum knew that soon after my arrival I would make my first walk in the garden and soon there would be a few daisies, a buttercup, a bluebell or even red-dead-nettle, beaming at her from her vase as she washed the dishes! She knew because that is what I do, that is what she taught me to do, to pick wild flowers! 

Mum not only taught me how a few wild flowers in the right vase look really pretty, she also taught me all their names, she taught me which ones were rare and should not be picked, and she taught me not to go mad, to pick all of them sparingly.

And that is what I do!

At home there was always an abundance of flowers, potted plants, seedling, little trees, and fruit, vegetables and wine made from homemade produce. There was always something at hand to wrap in a newspaper and take somewhere as a present. 

In my house there are paintings and handmade crafty things to take with me as gifts when I visit, but since I no longer have a garden there are no more plants or fruit and vegetable. 

That is why I sometimes spend a few Euros to buy my friend something for her garden.

It is what I like to do. That is how I was brought up!

What about my clients?

Do the children I work with collect wild flowers on the way to visit their grandmother? Do they grab a bunch of flowers from the garden to take to the Auntie or a neighbour who has a birthday? Do they learn the strange names of what my sister calls weeds, or smell the peculiar earthy smells on their fingers having picked them?

Perhaps some of them do, perhaps some of them like my sister, are not interested.

Perhaps some on them cannot for some reason but would really love to. Or perhaps they would really like help to do something else that was a natural part of my growing up but not theirs. Things like playing trains, swinging on a swing, looking at insects in the grass or the fish in the pond.

It is helping children in my groups to experience the sort of things that they perhaps otherwise would not get to know about, that makes all the hard work worthwhile. It is such a joy to see their faces as the box containing the toy train comes out, of the cupboard or when we all crawl around on the grass looking for a sign of life amongst what at ground level looks like a rainforest.

I hope one day when they are adults these children will also be able to say when involved in some favourite activity – 

‘That is what I like to do, it is how I am.

‘It is because of my upbringing.’