Bee happy amongst woodlands and flowers…
#nature @evenleywoodgarden

September Sea Bounty by @foxgloveandcowslip with added book about trees, a slice of tree drinks coaster, and a piece of fossilised tree… #nature #naturetable #bedsidetable @21stcenturyyokel

Walking amongst the bluebells on #GoodFriday… #woodland #nature #spring #flowers???? #bluebells

On the Nuthatch trail there’s an old quarry, that looks like proper Stig of the Dump country…. @rspb_love_nature #nature #SandyLodge #stigofthedump

Little squiggles harvesting ash keys #squirrels #nature #winter

#Repost @blackwellbooks
• • • • •
In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary – widely used in schools around the world – was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions – the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual – became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world.

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book – a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Lost-Words-by-Robert-Macfarlane-Jackie-Morris-illustrator/9781487005382

#blackwells #blackwellbooks #blackwellsbooks #blackwellsbookshop #bookstagram #lostwords #thelostwords #nature #dictionary #words #nature

Springtime in the garden…
.
#Spring #flowers #garden #nature

Heaven in green
.
#canopy #leaves???? #nature #woodland

Cuckoo Call by Betty Salthouse

Family loyalties, teenage angst, sibling rivalry, murder, attempted suicide. These are powerful, important subjects. Betty Salthouse’s third book Cuckoo Call pulls all the subjects in a story that could easily be about human relationships as it is about a family of blackbirds living with a quite literal cuckoo in the nest.

For anyone who watches BBC’s Springwatch we know how perilous the early days of a family of birds can be. Who doesn’t know what happens when a Cuckoo lays her egg in blackbird nest. When the young family of blackbirds and our hero, Brains, are introduced it is with love and affection, but we know that this can only end one way. From the outset we wonder how this story will play out. Betty Salthouse skillfully crafts an honest tale of what happens in nature that can teach us all a lesson.

Cuckoo Call beautifully written, at times brutal, but heartwarming story. A true classic tale in the making.

Spring in the woodland… #Spring #nature #flora #woodland

This her on was being mobbed by Black-headed gulls.. . #winterwalks #heron #nature

Old lanes and field systems… #theoldways #farminghistory #nature #walks

Like an ivy covered stag… #trees #nature #walks

Back in #TheLionsMouth: one of my most favourite places in the whole world #peace #serenity #woods #woodland #nature #thelionsmouth #Felbrigg

Pussy willow… #nature #Spring #woodland

Pussy willow… #detail #Spring #nature

The pincers of an Ant Lion preparing his trap in the sand… #springwatch #antlion @bbcspringwatch #nature #wildlife

This is essentially an autobiography of a meadow. In some ways I would have liked this story (for it is the story of a year in life of…) to start in May or June, as being in the depths of winter the January start makes for a bit of a slow start to the story. It’s also the beginning of a relationship with the meadow for John Lewis-Stempel and this all adds to it taking a while to get going.

By the time you reach November and December you realise why the the end of the year also has to be end of the book. It is sobering tale about where farming has got us over the years – the technical developments may not be for the best.

His picture in July and August of the toils of making hay was a brilliantly painted one, and from a personal point of view, I’ve been exposed to yet more of John Clare’s poetry (after reading Melissa Harrison’s Autumn immediately before it) to the point where I think I’m going to have to properly discover his work.

Autumn has always been my favourite season – even over and above that of Spring – the quality of the light, the temperature, and the smells of autumn make it the best ever. Melissa Harrison’s anthology, Autumn, is a beautiful and inspiring miscellany of poetry, prose, and non-fiction both collected from past writings, and specially commissioned for this collection.

We are taken on a series of personal journies that are about, inspired by, or are rememberances of how Autumn is. This is a book about Autumn to be read at Autumn.

There are sister books to this for all four seasons which I intend to read, in sequence as the year progresses.

The real day-confusion though, I guess it all started a week last Friday on my Birthday. Emma took me to see Bekonscot Model Village – I always thought it was Beaconsfield (which it is in) Model Village when I have seen it on the brown signs on the M40 ever since I first came to the Oxford area twenty years ago(!). It’s a fantastic place full of childhood wonder…

The thing is, that day out (and the Prezzo meal that followed it) made it seem a bit Saturday-ish (appropriately enough for our wedding anniversary any celebration-plans were dampened by waiting in all day for the Gas Man to Cometh and fix the boiler), and then we did Sunday-ish things on Saturday, so by the time we got to the bank holiday weekend I really didn’t know what day it was!

Then it got really confusing, because on Tuesday we went off to celebrate my belated-birthday with my Mum and Dad for a couple of days (after that is, the Gas Man Returneth to actually fix the boiler). We went to a very nice nursery in Suffolk where we got my present from my parents which was in the form of an Espallier Royal Russett Apple tree for the garden. Then we went out to the dinner at the local hotel in a failed attempt to stalk the Springwatch team…

Wednesday saw us making the short trip down to RSPB Minsmere for some more Springwatch-stalking. Within moments of us entering the (appropriately-named) Bittern Hide, not one, but two bitterns flew in from the right and landed in the reedbeds right in front of us. One of them proceeded to wade and swim out of the reeds in front of us. Brilliant stuff! We also heard them boom, and paid our respects to Spineless Simon, and heard the guys talking about an adder called Baldrick.

So, by the time we got to drive off into the sunset on Wednesday, whether it was Wednesday or Sunday (or indeed which Sunday) was really, all very confused. I could really do with another holiday. Oh, wait, in just nine working days time I will be getting one.