Tiny Forests and Rich Music

 On my morning stroll today I happened upon a Tiny Forest. I might have passed it by but for the notice which explained what it was. The Tiny Forest movement is an initiative launched in 2020 by a charity called Earthwatch Europe, and its aim is to turn tiny patches of urban land – no larger than a tennis court – into, well, tiny forests. They seem to want to encourage dense plantings of native trees, which doesn't seem a great idea in such a small space (and I'd want to be quite sure those 'native trees' were not imported). However, the Tiny Forest taking shape in Lichfield already has three mature trees at its corners (it's a triangular site), and a line of saplings along one side of the triangle seems to be the limit of the tree planting. Otherwise the emphasis seems to be on encouraging wild flowers, and thereby biodiversity, especially of insect life, which can only be good. I'll be interested to keep an eye on this Tiny Forest as the year goes on, and see how it prospers. 
   Lichfield is already a city of trees, with its acres of parkland edged with spinneys, its woodland on the edge of town, its gardens and open spaces, and abundance of street trees. As a result, there is birdsong in the air most of the time, even in winter. The parks are full of robins and blackbirds, constantly proclaiming their presence and their territorial rights, not to mention chattering sparrows and parties of foraging tits with their softer contact calls – and in the streets of the centre historique, as the French would call it, it's the thin calls of pied wagtails, now thoroughly urbanised, that prevail. The other evening, passing by the cathedral close, I heard two tawny owls conversing, and every dusk there are blackbirds singing until the last light has faded. Talking of blackbirds, here is R.S. Thomas's rather wonderful 'A Blackbird Singing' –  

It seems wrong that out of this bird,

Black, bold, a suggestion of dark

Places about it, there yet should come

Such rich music, as though the notes’

Ore were changed to a rare metal

At one touch of that bright bill.

 

You have heard it often, alone at your desk

In a green April, your mind drawn

Away from its work by sweet disturbance

Of the mild evening outside your room.

 

A slow singer, but loading each phrase

With history’s overtones, love, joy

And grief learned by his dark tribe

In other orchards and passed on

Instinctively as they are now,

But fresh always with new tears.