Oh, the irony, sitting here at a screen extolling the virtues of getting away from a screen and replacing it with a bit of green time!

It was Marcus and myself again today and we finished the scrub clearance in our bee clearing.

Fear not, scrub lovers! The scrub extends beyond the ridge and picks up again on the left. Any small mammals will still be able to seek cover from owls and the like.

We now have our pizza slice window looking out across the heath.

We will get a bank full of rosebay willowherb in the summer and will seed the top ground with our bee friendly seed-mix. This includes foxgloves, cornflowers, vetch, poppies, and a host of other colourful wildflowers.

To watch the changing landscape in the background and the frenetic bug-life in the fore, will make this a favourite destination.

Next week is our last week in this spot and we will need mattocks to pull out the bramble roots – joy!! And then we move northwards to our third destination bench where we will be clearing scrub and planting with lady’s bedstraw. This will help to off-set the cleaver loss in the bird-feeder clearing and give our bloody-nosed beetle colony a permanent home.

This should take us to the end of March and the start of spring, when everything starts to grow again.

Other jobs to do – get our new benches on site and reposition the old benches. Get our observation bench for the bird-feeder area (from Dunchurch) and get it sited on the opposite bank. Set up an easy-to-post-photo interface via Instagram or whatever, so sharing becomes easy to do.

Well done if you made it this far! It probably sounds like the ramblings of a mad-man who is trying to create a little bit of a haven for both humans and wildlife.

And remember, lose the screen time and get some green time!

Paul