Seeing if we can track birds and animal visits in the garden mud. The first attempt is fun but only definitely deliver pet rabbit prints.
Friday 14 February. Cloudy. 5°C
Time for a new idea. I’m trying to think of something we haven’t done yet and plough through google looking for suggestions. The only thing that comes up which doesn’t involve snow (we are desperate for snow!) and we haven’t already done is looking for tracks in the earth of different creatures. At first, I dismiss it. It’s been dry and cold for over a week and the earth is generally pretty hard. Short of going down to the beach (which we haven’t the time or the energy for today) it doesn’t seem likely that we’d find anywhere to do it. Then I think again.
We have quite a lot of muddy earth in the garden – thanks to our pet rabbits who ate all the grass years ago. It’s dried out, hard and has the roots and ends of weeds sticking out but maybe we can do something about that. For possibly the first time in our little neglected garden, B’s garden rake is about it have its moment.
We rake the patch (it’s about 1m²) firmly then realise we’re going to need to flatten it back down to make a smooth surface. I find a big plastic tub that should do the trick. By dragging it along we can make a smooth muddy surface which should take prints ok. Then we scatter some seeds over it – putting fabulous welly patterns in as we do – we rake and flatten it again. Then B heads off to school making me promise I won’t look at it until she comes back.
I keep my promise. There’s a pigeon hopping about and I hope he finds the patch. When B comes home we go to examine it. It’s a bit like looking for secret messages… we agonise over each different mark trying to work out what could have cause it. Our conclusion is that the bunnies have definitely made an impact but we’re not sure there’s anything else. I think there might be a pigeon foot but B disagrees. The mud is thick and not fine at all. We clearly need better resources for this one. Gets us thinking though…
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