I’ve heard people describe someone as sticking like glue, or like Velcro, and burrs were the original inspiration for this modern sticky material. Woodnoth, then, was a bit of a boring hanger-on of the poet George Herbert. ‘Woodnoth sticking to Herbert...
What formerly passed for a lawn in our garden is now becoming a wild meadow, notwithstanding its random colonization by tough tussocks. Recently learned that the word ‘hassock’ can also mean ‘tussock’ in Scottish or Northern English. ‘A...
‘A million species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction. Three-quarters of the world’s land and two-thirds of its marine environments have been “significantly altered” by human action.’ I read these lines in The...
At the precocious signal of spring, I see new-grown green peeping all about. And isn’t that a sweet scene, sitting on a tree root surrounded with ‘just’ the seven virtues. So understated, so immense. ‘Look there beneath that new-grown...
A moss stalk and seed likened to a bird and beak. Lovely. ‘Over and under and past boulders of granite, splashing upon mosses, whose browny-red seeds on the tall stalks were like bitterns standing with beaks upheld.’ Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka...
Two lovely names for a dandelion-daisy-ish yellow flower with spokes poking out like a leafy wheel. ‘The shock-headed flowers of the yellow goat’s beard, or John-go-to-bed-at-noon …’ Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful...
The past is a place which enriches me in almost all I do, and I love travelling there as much as I love travelling abroad. As Henry Miller said, it ‘fructifies the present’, and I see history as a vertical version of geography – a place you can...
I love the idea of trusting in Nature, but have to wonder whether it is capable of such apparently conscious agency in our lives, whether playing tricks or working miracles. If such agency is real, may it ever work miracles for you. ‘And then Nature, in whom she...
How wonderful to portray nature beefing herself up to wrestle with winter, stripping off all superfluity such as leaves, the better to grapple with cold and frost. ‘Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great...
In Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, you sense the extent to which she supported her brother’s writing. Some things she records become material for his poems. She also reads aloud to him, including his own compositions, and copies out his poems.But beyond...
Thoreau is notably patient in observing nature, able to stand still for half an hour or more, to let the frogs and other creatures overcome their fear or shyness and be overcome instead by curiosity. Here, he ends up being observed in return by half a dozen...
Surely, I could bestow such a belt on a character in a story? And those ‘brilliant-colored points or cones’, garlanding a pond, or a garden. ‘Walden, too, like an Indian maiden, wears this broad rainbow-like belt of brilliant-colored points or...
Yes, I know what he means. I’m becoming increasingly tolerant of weeds and have started protecting and even nurturing some. As a result, our lawn is taking on the character of a wild flower meadow, and this week I was heartened to see the first invasion of cow...
Nature’s hoarse summer voice? Wind shuffling leaves and crickets rubbing hands together? I like the metaphor, but nevertheless can’t quite capture what it is. ‘Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again, like the lowing of a cow let out to...
