Being Outside More

This morning I walked in the sunshine down to the local train station with my daughter. I was there solely as a beast of burden, my task was to carry a lightweight but large and unwieldy canvas, a crucial resource for her GCSE art exam on Thursday and Friday this week. Although producing creative work under exam conditions feels rather counter-intuitive to me. Apparently the reason why many exam boards have moved away from the assessment by coursework that was so in vogue when I was taking exams, is that it’s almost impossible to verify whether the work submitted has been produced by student effort alone. Once parents would have shamefacedly admitted that they had done most of their offspring’s coursework, now they have been supplanted by AI. Allegedly. My daughter’s drawing skills far outstrip my own, words are more my thing, and her coursework sketchbook is a thing of original beauty. As I write I am surrounded by many students, as I sit in the barrel-vaulted splendour of the reading...

  I usually try to set aside Monday as a writing day, but this week I will be working a long day at Forest School, so thought I would share this quick poem instead. The week ahead feels daunting for a variety of reasons and although I have lots of interesting and wonderful things I could write about, my tired brain on a Sunday evening is not equal to the task. All I have is ideas planted for another time. Seedlings Today I have no words I am full to the brim with thoughts But have no idea how to share them Sentences start but trail off Worry clamps my heart All I can do is water the seedlings These shoots saved from conflict I wish peace for both of us The photo shows cucumber seedlings germinated from saved seed that were collected in Hebron in Palestine. I was given them by Petra, one of the tutors on the Grow Leader course and a gardener with Sims Hill Shared Harvest. Germination is always a small miracle, and I hope I can continue to help them thrive over the coming weeks.

The sparrow gang is noisy in the overgrown hedge in my back garden. The planting is a mix of a spiky Pyracantha and two variegated Euonymus, one green and white and one yellow and green, which being evergreen glows brightly even in the depths of winter. It is the final reminder of the previous residents' choices, provides a useful barrier to the road beyond and great cover for small birds. I watch them peer out from the bush, dash across to the birdfeeder, then make a series of hops and jumps into my two fruit trees. The apple is looking particularly resplendent at the moment, freshly minted leaves and delicate five petalled blossoms, white with pink tips. We’ve had a bird feeding station in the garden since the children were small, and it’s currently positioned directly opposite the kitchen window, providing hours of entertainment whilst washing up. But now it seems that even a tube of birdseed is not a simple unalloyed public good. New advice released last week by the RSPB warns ...

I have dragged my laptop out into the garden, it is a beautifully blue-skied sunny day, the kind of Easter Monday you hope for but so rarely arrives. My houseplants are having a holiday on the patio in front of me, earlier I topped them up with compost and watered them thoroughly. They are jostled by unexpected breezes, a new reality for them. Inside the house my daughter is planning complicated baking, there are plans for afternoon tea. When I asked the children at work what happens at Easter, I was met with a chorus of “chocolate!”. We are a resolutely secular household, but the break from work and study is welcome. Easter weekend feels like a much more low pressure festival than Christmas, my son is back from university and we’re enjoying having him home. Good food has been eaten and I have performed the traditional ritual of visiting a garden centre and daydreaming in an aisle of seed packets, so much possibility and hope. In ALDI I bought a cheerful strip of bedding plants, jewel ...