I saw a Roe Deer this morning as I walked up the hill. It move behind us as we followed the turn in the path, and I wondered how close we had been to it without knowing. It stopped, ears pricked and watched us and I stopped too. The hound was oblivious, which is pretty funny for a sighthound.

This Roe Deer appears to live a solitary life away from the small herd nearby. It has been chased by dogs (not mine!) and harassed by teenagers, and it carries on living where it chooses.

To me, a Deer carries the message "a gentle initiation into adventure". That is something I found in a book once, and it has always come to mind when I meet a Deer - especially if it's a close encounter.

I like the timing of the message, and I'm really focused on looking for good messages and positive thoughts about life this week. I have been through a horrible time and I am hoping it is all over.

I am looking at the Dandelions as bright and strong flowers who feed the bees despite challenging weather conditions. I am looking at the Dandelions as pretty fairy clocks who capture the imagination of children, and paint the wind with life. I am never going to rid my garden of Dandelions, as some gardeners seem to want to.  I accept that amongst the cultivation and the planning, nature will have her way too.

Maybe I am blogging again, maybe not...

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Seeds or Weeds originally appeared on Taexalia on May 15, 2012.

Hawthorn Shield Bug ~ Acanthosoma Haemorrhoidale

True Bug ~ Suborder: Heteroptera

One hundred years ago these bugs were found only in the South of England, now the climate means they can live further North. I found this one in my garden, here in Fife, and she's a testament to my focus on creating a wildlife friendly garden. The wildlife hedge, which has lots of Hawthorn, is the reason she is here and I'm enjoying watching it grow, establish and begin to knit together. I'm enjoying the vibrant friends it seems to be attracting.

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Hawthorn Shield Bug originally appeared on Taexalia on May 15, 2012.

she makes me want to stretch and dance

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Tree Goddess originally appeared on Taexalia on April 23, 2012.

After a morning of heavy rains, the skies cleared for a time and it got so warm the greenhouse flaps had to be opened - it's always a good day when that happens.

I stood at my window looking out over the garden and plotting my planting pattern for the coming year. Two birds distracted me just below the window and I realised they were babies, the first fledglings I've seen this year. At first I thought they were Sparrows, but then I noticed the beak was not the right shape. Mostly I watched, slightly nervous, as one of the birds preened and lay almost on her side seemingly drying off the feathers under her wing.

I was nervous because she was oblivious to the large numbers of cats who live nearby, and I felt like Mama Bear watching over her ready to run outside and protect her should one take advantage of the situation.

No cat appeared, and I watched the two birds until they flew away. I'm fairly certain they were Robins and I'll be looking out for them tomorrow.

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Fledgling Robin originally appeared on Taexalia on April 20, 2012.

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Note To Self originally appeared on Taexalia on February 26, 2012.

One of the most common suggestions for attracting wildlife to the garden is "plant a Buddleia". If you are like me, you may just need to let nature take its course - two of my Buddleia bushes arrived as seeds on the breeze, but they are easily found in most garden centres.

Different beasties like different colours, so choose according to whom you wish to attract. Bees like darker blues and purples and butterflies prefer pink and lilac forms.

Buddleia are easy to care for and seem to be tolerant of most things, including neglect but they do flower on new growth, so a good pruning during Winter/Early Spring will do the nectar hunters a favour later on. That's what I've been doing today and, in the spirit of trying to recycle everything, I have turned most of my cuttings into wildlife habitat bundles. All you need is some sisal string and, once you have cut the prunings into roughly equal lengths, tie them up loosely.

I made two bundles, one with the foliage left on and one with the foliage stripped. You can build fancy habitat towers using old pallets and having several different habitats "under one roof", or you can dot them around the garden in sheltered spots like I did.

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Pruning For Wildlife originally appeared on Taexalia on February 21, 2012.

Yesterday I saw flocks of geese travelling North and I smiled up at them, hoping their sky arrows pointed to Spring.

Today I went to the garden to tackle some of the detritus of Winter -

• one carrier bag of cat poo lifted from the main veg plot
• the remains of my first greenhouse after "Hurricane Bawbag"

I'm sure there will be more cat poo, but I could only stomach lifting one bag today. It needs to be said that I do not own cats, nor do I hate them - nor do I, as one person assumed, draw "battle lines" as to whether dogs are better pets than cats. I did laugh at that one though, given that I have cared for around 70 cats as part of a Mother/Daughter foster team - who accidentally became adept at turning spitting claw ball feral kittens into loving family companions. I know cats, I have loved many cats and I think they are amazing animals - but they do shit in my veg garden and it does piss me off. This will be my third year of trying to prevent that. Wish me luck.

As for the greenhouse, well it wasn't so bad because we have already built the new greenhouse. It's bigger and probably just as likely to try and move to Norway in 100mph winds, but we have chosen a different spot this time. The instructions said "place out of wind" - well we live on the top of a hill and have no such place in our garden, so again - wish me luck.

Today I started shifted the gravel from the base of the old greenhouse into the base of the new one. I may have lost 1lb or 2. I may have a creaky body tomorrow. But the rescued pots and bits and pieces are now out of the shed and set up and the greenhouse is ready for action.

I started some seeds - onions and leeks in the greenhouse, and four kinds of tomatoes and four kinds of peppers on the bedroom windowsill.

This will guarantee a foot of snow to fall tomorrow.

Aside from the geese, I found a few other wee signs of Spring as I pottered around. Some honey bees were on the go, a hairy caterpillar crossed the patio and a lovely lacewing fluttered out of some of the stacked pots as I moved them out of the shed.

The bees will have some flowers to feed on as my Flowering Redcurrant is starting to open pink blooms, and I discovered the "weed" I rescued from a neighbour has decided to grow again and spread a little. It's a Winter Aconite, sometimes called Wolfsbane, and its first yellow flower brings the promise of warmer days and, most especially, looooonger days.

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Signs of Spring originally appeared on Taexalia on February 16, 2012.

Fox poop is the poop of choice today.

Well - if I'm going to write a pile of shit in an effort to be creative, I might as well try to be useful. *grin*

Personally, I think that getting to know poop is a fab passtime. Most wildlife, especially mammals, tend to stay hidden - and who can blame them? - so it adds something to a walk if you can get a sense of the secret life of a deserted path, and who has been sharing the space.

Foxes are quite common in the UK. In towns and cities, their populations are on the increase as they take advantage of our untidy behaviour. Urban foxes are often more visible and daring than their rural counterparts, possibly because there's not the same culture of lamping in gardens and parks as there is in the countryside. (A practise this blogger wholly disagrees with, in case it wasn't obvious.)

In the countryside, you are more likely to see fox droppings than you are to see the fox - but you might have some difficulty differentiating it from all the other poop (especially those left by irresponsible dog owners! don't get me started!), so here's a few tips and a wee sketch I made for you. I may add new photos for your viewing pleasure at a later date, but there is a blurry fox dropping here.

The general rule of thumb is that a carnivore dropping is usually sausage shaped with one rounded end and one pointed end. In the case of the Red Fox, their dropping are used to mark territory and they are often found in the middle of a path or - even better - on a raised place such as a step, a rock, a tussock, or even a handy mole hill.

Foxes have a varied diet and they scavenge as well as hunt. This means the colour and content of their droppings can vary a great deal, especially in Autumn when there are lots of berries to gorge on. Fox droppings may contain bones, feathers, fur, insect chitin and recycled Chinese takeways. Fox droppings are usually 8-10cm long but foxes will often spread their droppings out which makes it harder to see the pointy end, or the full size. Over time, your powers of observation will get to know the poops in a given spot and hopefully you will get the best confirmation of all - a fox sighting.

Have you found any interesting tracks and signs recently?

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Beginning With Fox Droppings originally appeared on Taexalia on January 15, 2012.

Mountain Hare moves first

Chooses direction later

Move and see what's coming...

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Haiku ~ Mountain Hare originally appeared on Taexalia on September 14, 2011.

I reject the idea that the riots that have dominated several English cities are simply a product of poverty, or race. I see people from all walks of life indulging in this behaviour - men and women, boys and girls of many ethnic backgrounds. They are not dressed in rags, they are in possession of mobile phones and some of them have jobs - a graphic designer, a teacher and someone who recently joined the armed forces - these are not poverty stricken, unemployed youths from the ganglands.

I have heard several interviews where perpetrators claim the responsibility lies with the government, and yes in some ways it does - but I cannot accept the failures of government justifies violence, destruction, theft and killing. Even if I sometimes see the government indulging in those very same examples of behaviour.

I do not wholly support the Police - their methods are highly questionable and their management of crowds fails often, and even leads to the death of innocent people. We need to know the full story of what happened in the taxi that resulted in the shooting of Mark Duggan. We need to know the full story behind claims that a 16 year old girl was attacked by 15 riot police at the vigil following his death - did police methods inflame things? If so, they need to consider their part in this.

I reject the idea that rioting that spread was in any way a protest against Mark Duggan's shooting. It looked more to me like a free for all opportunity to steal coveted consumer goods and destroy other people's property. That is unacceptable to me as "protest".

I am bemused by the apparent lack of police response in many areas. I am bemused by the reports that instructions seemed to be "stand back and let it happen". I understand that they were stretched and dealing with a highly unusual and challenging set of circumstances, but I cannot help but recall my own negative experiences of police behaviour. I experienced kettling during a political rally in Edinburgh - the road was officially closed to traffic by the council until 5pm to allow space for the protest to conclude with the rally. At around 3pm the police began to close ranks and try to herd us onto the pavement, squashing us together like sardines. They had no legitimate reason for doing this and it felt very much like they were trying to instigate trouble. To this day I think it was an abuse of power, but I know that if trouble had erupted it would have been the protesters who would have been tarred with the brush of disgrace.

Another encounter with Police springs to mind - this time in London following an American Football game at Wembley. We were walking to the tube station and crowd management techniques apparently involve mounted police creating breaks in the crowd to filter folk down in stages. The policewoman on the horse nearest us beckoned us through and we stepped forward and then the policeman on the other side shouted and backed his horse at me and I thought I was going to be trampled. I thought it was disgraceful that in following the instructions of one officer, another felt entitled to endanger me and intimidate me.

On neither of these occasions was I breaking any law, acting in an unruly manner or damaging anyone's property.

So to watch the footage of riots, violence and looting and see officers standing back leaves me confused. It seems like a massive swing to go from over zealous treatment of peaceful people (including the death of Ian Tomlinson) to the softly softly approach taken this week with violent rioters.

Of course in some places the police did not even turn up, so stretched were their numbers - but at the very least questions need answers and there needs to be better definition over what is acceptable from a crowd and what is acceptable from police.

Seeing the wider reaction and commentary to the riots, I can at once understand the anger at what these people have done but I also find myself wondering why things erupted this way - what were the catalysts, how can we create a phoenix from the flames and heal the rifts in society that breed this contempt?

I hear the calls for water cannons and rubber bullets, the calls for intervention from the army and I feel sad that we collectively seem to want to respond in kind. For to respond to the specific incidents that have taken place with any of these extreme measures equates to instantly over-riding guidelines and policies with a knee-jerk reaction. I appreciate experienced police officers who have experience of using these methods in Northern Ireland speaking out and saying that none of the incidents have warranted rubber bullets etc. In London, at least, the increased police numbers seems to have averted repeat performances without the need to resort to violence.

One theme running through this for me is the group dynamic - how the frenzy builds and people allow themselves to follow the crowd and do things they would not normally do, or say things they would not normally say. There has been a freedom or safety in numbers for the people who gathered to loot and riot, and this group dynamic also plays out in the reaction that calls for a violent response in return.

The even bigger picture spreads out and I think of Norway and the recent attacks and I think of the response from the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, when he called for more democracy in response to terrorism.

"If one man alone can show so much hate, imagine all the love and humanity a whole nation can give." ~ Jens Stoltenberg

It is difficult to separate the judgement and anger at what these people have done - the injuries to people and animals (five police dogs were injured), the destruction of homes and businesses, the theft of so much property and the arrogant joy some of them express at their achievements. I'm quite sweary when I listen or watch, but I think we have a lot to learn from all the threads of this tangled web and a measured response is better than a reactionary retaliation.

We can demonise the people who burned down homes but we must remember that the police are not pristine providers of safety and freedom any more than David Cameron is an honourable man who upholds peace - his example as a leader involved in several armed conflicts, who in his own youth partied with the Bullingdon Club (a club who rent restaurants and vandalise them as a bit of posh fun) and has employed a man of questionable media practises in the form of Andy Coulson.

I'm still thinking, and sorting and need more coffee...

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Riot Responses originally appeared on Taexalia on August 10, 2011.