Sycamore

We packed up our apartment in Dublin in December, and moved to the outskirts of Limerick, two hours away. We made jokes about our new suburban life, peered through the windows cynically. Over the following months, we marveled that so little could happen in a place with so many houses. I felt like life was harder to notice here - you really had to squint to see it.

The sycamore tree in our back garden teemed with life. Early on, we bought a plastic bird feeder and every week thereafter I dutifully dropped two bags of wild bird seed into my trolley. I came to recognise starlings, sparrows, chaffinches, blue tits, doves, crows, blackbirds, even - twice - a minuscule wren. One magpie (sorrow); sometimes two (joy). In January, when our budgie died, we buried him between the roots. In March, we pinned tufts of our dog's winter coat to the branches and watched in delight as it was claimed as nest material. When the tree was bare, our guests would watch patiently from the neighbours' willow as we refilled the feeder; by July the leaves were so dense that they could hide and wait above our heads. As the months grew colder again and helicopter seeds twirled to the ground, the thrush picked through the blanket of leaves that had settled over our unkempt lawn, and when the fog froze that December, the robin was vividly orange against the tendrils of frost that hung from the branches.

Our lives couldn't quite fill that house and we echoed a bit inside its walls. But it didn't always matter; we just needed to look out the kitchen window, at our tiny ecosystem, to feel connected to something.