anticontent

It's still coronation weekend, and bank holiday Monday is when everyone in the UK has been encouraged to do some volunteering. The coronation might not be my thing, but I spent some time in the garden.

If nature is your thing, and you have some outdoor space, you can help out without leaving home. You don't need much space. Even if it's a patio with a few pots or even a window box, there's something you can do.

The RHS has a nice little guide on what plants support which bugs.

We've been trying to cultivate a nature-friendly garden for a few years now. We have some large pieces of rotting wood down for beetles. We let large areas grow wild, even allowing some nettles and brambles. We leave gaps for small animals to come and go at the end of the garden. Though, while we have at least one dog, we try to keep badgers out.

One thing that's been nice to see is our immediate neighbours growing wild areas too. We used to get a few disapproving looks and even the odd snarky comment. But there's increasing awareness a wild garden, or partly wild garden, is a good thing.

We've had a bird box up for a few years now. This year some blue tits have made it their home. For the past few days the parents have been coming with food for their young. So I made a little video.

I shot this with a Moment telephoto lens attachment for my iPhone. I attached it to the built-in 3x lens in my phone. And then, because I don't have a tripod yet, I propped my phone up against a small food compost caddy on top of our recycling bin, a few metres away from the bird box.

I shot it landscape and edited it down in iMovie for iOS, forgetting that iMovie doesn't like portrait video. I think there are work-around but I didn't bother this time around. Luckily I'd framed it so iMovie's square crop still covered all the action.

I edited it down to just the comings and goings, and then made some final edits in VSCO, including reducing the speed to 0.7x for a better look at the birds coming and going.

Hopefully a rather nice thing.