Welcome to our garden! We have just moved into a lovely new house and this one has a garden! I am beyond excited about being able to see the gorgeous views of nature from different windows around the house. I have always enjoyed bird-watching and nature walks, so this is an incredible joy for me.

We hope to learn more about the inhabitants of our garden, and do our part to support them and protect them year round. I will find and share beautiful photos of them and collect interesting facts about them for future reference.

What Is Breakfast With Birds?

It will be an area on my blog where I share descriptive stories about what’s going on in our garden. From plants to birds and insects. I’ll write all about what’s been happening around the feeders and bird bath, what the butterflies have been up to and even introduce you to some interesting and unexpected visitors that stop by occasionally too.

This will be a sort of online garden diary. A record of all our little neighbours and how their home evolves through the seasons. A virtual escape for anybody who doesn’t have a garden of their own. I will share what I learn about them and the funny antics I observe through my windows. I hope you will enjoy this series as much as I am.

How It All Started

Being housebound since 2015 means that I don’t get to see much outside of these walls, so having a garden now is a huge blessing. I am excited to learn more about the plants, birds and butterflies I have already spotted and will share them here as I learn more about them. 

Since moving to the new house, I have been waking up early most mornings. I would have been very upset about this habit in the old house, but here we have this lovely garden and the birds wake up early too. 

Anybody with ME/CFS knows that upon waking we are not really functional yet and have to lie there for a while until our bodies wake up. I listen to the birds, the rain and wind and pray and when I am ready, I slowly make my way to the kitchen with my walker. There I will sit by the window, with my legs propped up on a chair and watch the birds having breakfast at the feeders. So the daily records began…

Childhood Memories of Breakfast With Birds

I grew up in South Africa where I would spend my weekends exploring the “bush” – any uninhabited land that was overgrown and wild. I’d ride my bike all over the place and explore new roads or paths I had not been down before. I’d sit on rocks and listen to the birds, watch the monkeys playing in the trees and on the power lines and just enjoy the hot sun and cool breeze rustling through the leaves and grasses. 

My Oupa (grandfather) was a carpenter and builder – he was an artist and a musician too – and earlier in life, before I was born, he was a church pastor also. He loved nature and he loved the Lord.

When I was little, he and my gran built a beautiful house on the East Coast and in his back yard he built a huge aviary, it spanned the length of his double garage and was just as wide and high too. He filled it with all kinds of birds, even some flightless birds, planted a small tree and decorated the aviary with tree stumps, wooden bird houses and reeds. 

It was a lovely oasis, big enough for him to walk into, and that is where he would have breakfast with the birds every morning. He always woke early and would make tea for everybody in the house and bring it to their beds – he would then go out into the aviary and sit quietly with his birds. I am sure this was his quiet time with the Lord. 

I remember, being quite young then, waking up early and going to sit out there with him. I wasn’t allowed inside the cage, but I’d sit quietly on the outside feeding the canaries by hand through the fence. I’d pick long grasses and stick them through the holes. The little canaries would fly down and, gripping the fence, would peck at the grasses I offered. This was precious quiet time. This is where breakfast with the birds took hold of my heart.

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My Plans For This Corner of My Blog

I am not strong enough to go out into the garden regularly, so for now I am enjoying the views from indoors. In this series I hope to share with you the joy of watching nature through descriptive writing.

Since I’m looking through windows, I will find related images online to illustrate my stories and maybe one day, when I’m well enough to get out there, closer to the birds, I will be able to take lovely photos myself.

I hope that you, if also housebound like me, will enjoy reading my stories and the accompanying photos.

I will also link to the photographers I source the images from so that you can see more of their gorgeous nature shots and maybe this way we can explore the natural world without much exertion or payback. How does that sound?