Being Outside More

  First, simply go back in time ten years and plant a plum tree In order to plant the tree, be financially stable enough to own a house and garden Cultivate the type of friend who buys you a fruit tree from Aldi as a birthday present A friend that you fell out with years ago, but who comes to mind every time you reach for a ripe plum Wait years for the tree to grow, enjoy the pure white blossom each spring During this time, consult the internet for advice on care of fruit trees Ignore most of this Mulch haphazardly, prune erratically, chase pigeons from its branches Wait for a year of extreme heat, for thousands of solar hours converted to sweet fruit Branches drooping thick with plums the colour of a bruise You don’t know how this tree can stand it, but she is magnificent in her abundance In the mornings the grass beneath her offers a banquet for wasps, ants, slugs A cocky squirrel grabs one in its front paws and nibbles voraciously Everyone is feasting on her generosity And yet, ...

Sunday morning found me at Ashton Court on the outskirts of Bristol, accompanying my daughter to the last ever session of her teen Nordic Walking group, the end of an era. Some of her fellow walkers will be heading for university in September, and she will be starting at a new college, change is everywhere. It may be inevitable, but it’s not always comfortable. At this stage in the school holidays there is a subtle shift, a sense of the season turning. After so many years with children in the academic system, I have become institutionalised. I feel myself twitching and wanting to set everything in the house in order, to check for outgrown shoes, buy stacks of new stationery. But the reality is that quietly and without consciously registering it, I know that this ‘back to school’ reflex is no longer necessary. I have done my time with name tags and education admin, my youngest child will be 18 in December, it is time to stand down. While my daughter and the group set off with their lead...

Deep into August now, the season of holidays, it seems everyone is on the move. North Hertfordshire might not feature in many travel pages, but it’s where my parents live, where I spent my teenage years, and I have just returned from a quiet week there full of thrilling ordinaryness. My parents downsized a few years before the pandemic, leaving behind a massive garden with a greenhouse and vegetable patch, mature fruit trees, and they have been quietly transforming the garden in their new home. It’s a fight against sterility, the surrounding gardens in this leafy 1980s development are high on the neatness scale. And peace is sometimes hard to come by when the phalanx of power tools is unleashed, a sense that plants are something to be battled with. Hearing a whirring whine one morning I expressed surprise that anyone would be mowing grass as all I could see was dusty and yellow. Probably someone hoovering their artificial lawn, my mum replied archly. The plastic grass next door did gli...

In my daily morning pages I've noticed that it's become difficult to write about anything else but the continuing heatwave. Time spent closely observing the natural world is confronting. There have been various heatwave images and ideas bouncing around my brain over the last few weeks, so sitting in the quiet carriage on the train this morning, I brought these scraps together in a poem. Notes on a Heatwave My heart aches with noticing  Leaves curled and crumpled  Dry rust stained patches among tired green  My newsfeed serves me images of fields from the air A dry expanse of sun-bleached stubble Deep rooted oaks dark ink blots on parchment Historic parterre palimpsest on yellowed National Trust lawns On the continent rivers drop and reveal warships Footpaths are trampled concrete hard  We have scratched the soil and made it dust There is a drought of thought We are too hot and cross to listen to farmers Who speak in resigned voices  Just another item on a news bu...

For white collar office jobs, August is an odd time. Even if you’re not a parent and so not bound to the academic calendar for a summer break, you become aware of this odd slowness, an inbetweenish feeling. It becomes impossible to set meetings or deadlines and if you have any dealings with local government departments you learn to just give up and wait for September. And yet on the pagan wheel of the year, here is Lammas on 1 August, which traditionally marks the beginning of harvest. In terms of plant growth it is a busy expansive time, with everything desperately fruiting. It is a liminal time too, as it is equidistant between the bright peak of the summer solstice and the September equinox where day and night are briefly in balance, before time runs off again and begins the slide into darkness. I am a haphazard gardener, I have fallen into it gradually, I am not a dedicated allotment keeper with neat rows of veg. Just as with housework (which I am equally sporadic about) I have sur...

When even Thought for the Day on Radio 4 starts gloomily quoting from Revelations, refusing to offer glib words of comfort, you know something is off kilter in the world. Wild fires are raging in the US, in continental Europe, in Scotland. Maybe at this point it’s more comfortable to be a denier, to be able to see those images and hold fast to your belief that it’s ‘just weather’, that there’s no reason to change anything we’re doing. Last year I took a short course on nature writing with my local university. It was one of the sparks that led to this blog. Nature writing has maybe a comforting image, a close look at the beauty of the natural world, soaking up all that awe and wonder. But a person can’t spend time closely observing and trying to represent nature’s beauty without running headlong into the effects of the climate crisis. I hear it in my dad’s voice on the phone as we swap gardening notes, he is mourning for his parched garden, his unspoken worry about the world his grandch...