Blog
-
Nature Notes
The Fallow Buck and the Lightning Fork. Such heavy rainstorms. What my Northamptonshire Nan would have called ‘knicker soakers.’ I walk towards the approaching thunderstorm at first; it is on the other side of the hill and this side is yet dry. A bank of heavy grey cloud deepens and white cloud moves fast in […]
-
Nature Notes
Burning Fields. Though the unprecedented heat has eased, the frightening intensity of it remains. Coldharbour Farm and its grain silos shimmered like a mirage in the fan-oven heat. Much of the harvest there was done before the schools broke up, and woodpigeons panted on the sticky tarmac, where even the water leaks had dried up. […]
-
Nature Notes
Camp Albion. I went recently to see Camp Albion at the Watermill Theatre in my hometown. It’s a play about the Newbury Bypass road protests of the ‘90s, that bitterly divided our town. It’s beautifully written, researched & realised by Danielle Pearson and directed equally well by Georgie Staight. The imagined story is movingly told […]
-
Nature Notes
Galvanising Hope. A week has been bookended by Festivals. The first being the inaugural Farming, Food and Literature Festival at FarmED, a not for profit community interest farm, food and education centre in the Cotswold hills, with far-reaching views over the Evenlode valley and the Wychwoods. The festival partners were Chelsea Green Publishing – and […]
-
Nature Notes
Starlings as Lighthouses. The chimney pot starling is making a fool of me. I keep hearing swallow song – that twittering-buzz that sounds like a whole flock in one creature. I dash out several times, but see nothing. When the song comes from the hedge by the open door of my hut, I realise. A […]
-
Nature Notes
The Red Chestnut. The red horse chestnut, toppled in the last February storm beside the white cottage, is budding and putting out leaves. It keeled over from its roots, snapping most of them, but possibly leaving some in the ground. The root plate is large and the lifted, conical plug, a geological core of layered […]
-
Nature Notes
A Society of Sparrows and Harvest, or, The Smell of Burning Fields … We are once again at peak sparrow. When the combine harvester begins its wide turn into Home Field, their reporting of the event almost drowns out its roar. We hear the great machine’s billion-bee buzz, accompanied by its flotilla of header and […]