Robin's Song

Thoughts on spring, new possibilities and the healing power of nature

Robin in our garden. Photo by Gerhard Sommer.

The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Since childhood, I have loved Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story of The Secret Garden. I love how a cheerful robin senses the pain of a neglected and unloved little girl named Mary and leads her to an old key that unlocks the door to a long neglected garden hidden behind high stone walls.

Within those stone walls, Mary experiences the magic of early spring, when young green shoots begin to surge up through barren soil. As she begins to nurture the newly growing plants, the stone walls around her constricted heart begin to crumble, and she starts to heal emotionally and spiritually. She becomes involved in the world around her, and her imagination begins to grow.

Once Mary meets her invalid cousin Colin and introduces him to the garden, his body and spirit begin to heal as well. By summer, both the garden and the children are blossoming.

And it all began with the help of a kind and cheerful little robin!

I am thinking about this today because the spring equinox has just occurred, the days are definitely getting longer, and new green shoots and buds are beginning to grow in my own garden here on the west coast of Ireland. After a very long, dark, rainy and windy winter, the sun is even beginning to shine a little.

Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

I went for a walk down our boreen (a narrow, one-lane, country road) this afternoon and saw that the first wild flowers are beginning to bloom among the hedgerows that line both sides of the lane. Early spring flowers here are mainly cloaked in colors of white and yellow. The little white daisies appear first (and are the last to disappear in late fall). Then come the wild yellow primroses and dandelions, as well as the yellow gorse. A delicate little violet also pokes its head up here and there, adding a welcome touch of purple.

Early spring always feels like magic to me, full of potential and possibility—no matter how old I become. This is the time of year that I feel like I could do, create or achieve whatever I set my mind on.

Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

In The Secret Garden, a wise young boy named Dickon gently helps Mary and Colin heal. Dickon grew up on the moors, and Hodgson describes his eyes as looking like "pieces of moorland sky" and says that he smells of "heather and grass and leaves...as if he were made of them." Dickon charms wild animals with his wooden flute and understands that all of nature is alive, sentient and filled with healing power.

I love such stories and characters because they add richness and depth to my understanding of how deeply interconnected I am with the world around me.

They also remind me how healing it is to spend time in nature.

It is amazing the way in which stress and worry simply dissolve when I take off my shoes and walk barefoot on the earth. When I breathe in the scents and colors of the wild flowers. When I send gratitude and appreciation to the trees, rivers, mountains and sea surrounding me. When I stay present and observe what the bees, butterflies, tadpoles and dragonflies are doing in my garden.

Or when I greet the robins that are now appearing in our hedgerows.

Although robins live in Ireland year-round, I don’t see or hear them through the long, dark, windy and rainy winter days. It is only once early spring arrives and a bit of sun finally breaks through the rain that I become aware of them again.

Whenever my husband Gerhard mows the pathway through our rewilded garden or I dig in my raised vegetable beds, robins are close at hand so they can catch the freshly turned up earthworms. Two springs ago, a little robin seemed to adopt Gerhard. For several weeks, the robin would hop around him every time he left the house and follow him wherever he went in the garden.

We don’t really know why he did this, but it felt like he was welcoming us to the neighborhood.

Both male and female robins have red breasts and are virtually identical. Both of them sing as well. And their songs—like the new energy that surges at the spring equinox—make me feel happy, joyful and full of hope.