Category: The Natural World
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The enchanted temperate rainforest
In the midst of moving-in frenzy, getting things sorted, arranging so many things in a bid to be comfortable in our new home, we were able to take a short amble around the lovely woods next door. Thanks to David Attenborough’s Wild Isles program, we now understand that much of the east coast of the…
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A morning enchantment
A roe deer was a welcome visitor to our garden at dawn today, and she looked directly at us while I fumbled for my phone camera, bringing it into play only in time to catch her white bum! So I looked for the closest image around that reflected just how near she was to the…
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The circuit . . .
The red kites have their circuit, and we have ours. It’s a bit of a longer walk, all along the dyke until the passage through the field leads to home, and especially in the cold and biting breeze, but well worth it. Sometimes, a photograph can more surely evoke the passage, but contemporaneous notes also…
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Notes on a marshland walk
For my joy this morning, I can’t do better than to relay some contemporaneous notes of our afternoon walk yesterday. Who knows, one day these notes may find their way into another poetic effort, perhaps less formal than the sonnet of my previous joy. But for now I’ll go with the joy I have in…
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Peril in the joy . . .
Yesterday’s blog entry felt like an opening opportunity to investigate the depths of these springtime joys. And since I’ve challenged myself to see what poetic inspirations I can find on the general theme of ‘spring,’ I thought I’d have a quick go in the sonnet form. I’m a fan of the classic Shakespearean (sometimes called…
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Signs of spring, if you look
We ambled along the dyke path, through the Ken-Dee marshland, on a reasonably clement afternoon. I’d brought the big camera along so I could get close enough to the various trees lining the circuit, to try to spot some buds of incipient spring. The white fluffy willow buds looked ready to burst, and the oak…
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Fauna of the Glen Kens
From the soaring heights reached by the circling red kite, to the lowly depths on the dyke wall inhabited by a bank vole, the fauna of these parts continue to enchant. We were bemused by what we took to be the pursuit of a leisurely gliding heron by the red kite. While interrogating Google to…
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Green, verdant, mysterious wood
And yet, it’s deep winter here in the Glen Kens. But it’s really quite mild, as the days pass by with temperatures in the upper single figures. My thoughts have tended toward the poetic, these days, as we amble through the ageing woodland. I would like to believe that the poetic form is not only…
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Those life requirements . . .
I’ve been thinking about our cat’s life. She exhibits Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs quite faithfully: food, warmth, hygiene, affection, play. What she doesn’t have in her life, as she’s equilibrating to a restricted bungalow existence, is adventure. But this weekend, this weekend, we open the window and let her out into the greater world.…
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A trip down memory lane . . .
I had cause yesterday to renew my mental acquaintance with the research fields of my youth, adult and middle-age experience. Now that I am old(er!) I have to traverse back some two decades to remember some of the epiphanies of my research endeavours. After finally being redundified from my postdoc passions at the hoary age…
Roads to Joy 