Houseplants, once overlooked Cinderellas, are now seeing a comeback. Many of the younger generation living in flats in cities are greening their homes/ living spaces with house plants. Such urban gardening is now a popular trend and indoor jungles are becoming increasingly fashionable.
Continue reading “Houseplants are back”
It is early morning on the banks of Ireland’s wild river—the mighty Shannon. The rising sun is just beginning to light up the water. The earth is awakening.
Continue reading “Still Listening with St Patrick”
With Wordsworth we re-visit the beautiful Wye valley near Tintern Abbey to re-discover the source of one of his most famous pieces of poetry.
Continue reading “Re-visiting the Wye with Wordsworth”
Unlike us, plants don’t take holidays! Returning after a week away we found that our garden has moved on. Cottage gardens are forever changing, ours certainly is.
Continue reading “Mid-summer’s garden”
This is an ancient place, a remnant of old England, where ponies stop the traffic and donkeys look into shop windows, while pigs rummage in the woods in the acorn season. Things are different here! Past traditions still flourish, ‘commoners’ graze their animals overseen by a court of ‘verderers’ assisted by ‘agisters’! After 900 years, though still owned by the Crown, it’s now an open National Park.
Continue reading “The New Forest”
On a still, clear May evening in a wood in East Sussex the fire crackles as a group of people, including my daughter and son-in-law, chat together. Why have they come to this secret location at this time of night? Even more strange is that some of them have brought some musical instruments with them? What’s going on?
Continue reading “A Night with Nightingales”
With the dramas of bird migration taking place everywhere, some of the tagged cuckoos we have been following are back from Africa.
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