Nicola Chester

Nature Writer and Activist

Edward Thomas

  • Nature Notes

    Bedstraws and Bee Orchids. I am at my desk when a familiar, fresh and lovely scent – nostalgic almost – assails me. Petrichor! The smell of rain on dry, dusty ground, from the Greek petra for stone and ichor, the golden liquid that runs through the veins of the Immortals. The last, fat raindrops from […]

    Read more 🠂

  • Nature Notes

    Fond Hornlight, Wild Hoarlight. When the mercury dipped, the frost stayed for days along the field edge under the wood; hoary fingers making a frost shadow, where the sun didn’t penetrate. Sunrise and sunset bookend the shortening days in aurora colours of yellow, orange, blue, green. In the morning, birds sit on the highest branches […]

    Read more 🠂

  • Nature Notes

    Rooks and White Violets. Each springtime, I slow past greening banks, searching for the first white violets. I mistake them for the smallest things: ‘The shell of a little snail bleached/ In the grass; chip of flint, and mite/ Of chalk; and the small birds’ dung/ In splashes of purest white’. These are the poet […]

    Read more 🠂