Posted: 20/12/2012 at 22:47
Sadly things change flowering rose.
I grew up in the sixties, in a house which backed onto a field and post war allotments. There was a huge derelict pig farm and vicarage with orchard. I recall being woken at the crack of dawn to the sound of birds. There were owls too, which would sometimes keep you awake and horses would sometimes be grazing in the field.
We would collect grasshoppers, ladybirds and butterflies in the summer and have competitions to see who could collect the most before letting them go. The noise of grasshoppers could sometimes be deafening. We'd also go out collecting gooseberries, blackberries, rashberries and get apples from the vicarage. Then there were the wild flowers which could be picked. There were old, man made water holes at the derelict pig farm were hundreds of frogs lived. If I ever said I was bored, I recall getting into trouble, and we seldom watched TV. Once a year the field would be cut and we'd build den's with the bales of hay.
We lived along a road on the main A6, it was at the edge of the city, now where I played is a built up area. The only thing left from that time is a tree, which you can still see from the main road, we called it the big tree, many a day was spent seeing who could climb the furthest up it and there's probably quite a few adults who scratched their names on it as children.
Very little in the way of wildlife exists there now. The orchard is probably still there no doubt fenced off in the name of Health and Safety.
I'm a short walk now from the country and a river estuary and also encourage birds to the garden, not quite the same as years gone by when nature was on my doorstep.
