Cake at the Sahnestuberl…

Well, Readers, we are nothing if not predictable – Easyjet willing, we will soon be off to Obergurgl in Austria for our annual two weeks of walking in the meadows and eating cake. Things are a little messed up this year – the lift to the Hohe Mut Alm in the village doesn’t start until 15th July, by which time we will be well used to panting up and down steep hills under our own steam. The temperatures are blessedly low ( at one point they’ll creep above 70 degrees Fahrenheit) which is just as well, as most of the walks are above the treeline) and while some rain is forecast, it’s mostly in the afternoon, so plenty of time for a walk followed by some reading. I have packed two books by Robert Seethaler, an Austrian author who wrote a fantastic book about the Tyrol called ‘A Whole Life’, and who has just published ‘The Café With No Name’, about Vienna, along with Arundhati Roy’s biography of her mother ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’, and Emily Wilson’s book about what the classics can teach us, so that should keep me going. I will report back! Watch this space!

Baby Marmot

Splendid Hydrangeas

Dear Readers, en route to tea and lemon cake with my  lovely friends A and M, I passed some particularly splendid plants, including this Durham Road hydrangea. Hydrangeas really do seem to like the clay soil around here, there are lots that seem to be enjoying the hot, dry conditions.

But I also rather like the ‘accidental’ gardens that spring up at the base of walls, where all the self-seeded plants make a bid for escape. This lovely combination of species Geraniums and California poppies is very pretty….

There is no stopping this Mexican Fleabane….

The willowherbs are also having a good year – I have accidentally nurtured some American Willowherb in one of my front garden containers, and it’s a good metre tall.

And my pals even have a stray Day Lily popped up outside their house.

And look at this lovely pale pink Musk Mallow, which is also having a very good year, there’s loads in my garden.

And finally, I know I keep going on about the hibiscus trees, but honestly they look so good against a blue sky…

So, what’s happening in your neck of the woods? How is the heat affecting your plants? I’ve never been so glad for a north-facing back garden.

Tardigrade, winner of the 2025 Guardian Invertebrate of the Year award (Photo by By Philippe Garcelon – Tardigrade, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104872070)

Well Readers, it’s that time of the year again, when we need to think of our favourite invertebrate and nominate it for the Guardian Invertebrate of the Year. Personally, I think they should suggest a short list, rather than letting it be a free for all – there’s enough invertebrates out there that each person could vote for a different one, and then where would we be? In 2024 the earthworm won, which is not unreasonable (unless you live in parts of the world where earthworms are an invasive species of course, such as parts of North America). But what would we choose? Last year I went for the hairy-footed flower bee, such a harbinger of spring and such a busy pollinator.

But how about somebody less popular than a bee? How about a cellar spider, which specialises in capturing and eating spiders much larger than itself?

A Hummingbird Hawkmoth would be close to the top of my list too…

But honestly, I think this should be the year of the Jumping Spider. Yes, I know that they have been known to jump at your eyeballs (probably they can see themselves reflected there) but how many invertebrates actually look  you in the eye at all? Surely a visit to Accident and Emergency is worth it for the privilege of making the acquaintance of these extraordinary animals.

Fencepost Jumping Spider (Marpissa muscosa)

So, who would you vote for? Do you incline towards the attractive, the useful or the extraordinary? Or all three? Do share!

A witch at her cauldron surrounded by beasts. Etching by J. van de Velde II, 1626. Contributors: Jan van de Velde. Work ID: kdrau2b4.

I’ve always loved the fierceness and defiance of Anne Sexton’s work. Isn’t there a part of a lot of us that would like to be wilder? See what you think.

Her Kind

By Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Dear Readers,  I’m finding it rather wonderful to hear the chuckle of jackdaws here in East Finchley – they were rare visitors when I first arrived back in 2010, but this year a family of four have been coming to the garden, and its been interesting to see how busy the youngsters are keeping the parents.

The youngsters sit on the suet feeder and watch as the parent pecks out a few pellets. Clearly they haven’t learned how to manage it themselves yet!

These birds have attracted a lot of folklore, most of it contradictory. Seeing a jackdaw on the way to your wedding is a very good omen, but having one settle on your roof means a calamity is approaching. Or that something new is beginning, depending on where you live. They are renowned  for their fondness for shiny objects (their species name monedula means ‘money’) and to call someone a ‘jackdaw’ implies that they are a bit of a hoarder, no doubt with a drawer full of elastic bands, safety pins, a cork, some out-of-date parking permits and a pair of secateurs that need sharpening (ahem). Whatever they ‘mean’, these smallest UK corvids are smart, adaptable birds, who have learned how to use a bird feeder meant for much smaller birds than them. Good luck to them, I say.

Well, Readers, we continue to be visited by the fox cub every night – I’m pretty sure that s/he and the vixen hang out at the bottom of the garden during the day, whenever John goes to the shed he disturbs some russet creature.

Here are Mum and the cub together, they seem very close still, though I haven’t seen  the little one trying to feed.

They both look very bedraggled after the thunder storm a few nights ago.

Always so watchful…..

The baby squirrel is also much in evidence first thing in the morning….

But for now, I’m really glad that the foxes are still around and safe. Soon the cub will probably need to move off and establish their own territory, and that’s when the trouble really starts – most urban foxes only have a life expectancy of about eighteen months, compared to a maximum life expectancy of 9 to 12 years. Fingers crossed f or this little one.

Dear Readers, I was very sad to hear that, after a century, the Shipping Forecast would no longer be broadcast on longwave radio. It was originally programmed in this way because it could be listened to by sailors at sea, wherever they were around the British  Isles. But the transmission was turned off this Saturday (27th June 2026), although it’s still available on Radio 4, BBC Sounds and on the HM Coastguard NAVTEX network.  Nonetheless, such an ending deserves a memorial, I think, and here is Carol Ann Duffy’s sonnet ‘Prayer’, a favourite of mine. See what you think.

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Dear Readers, I was at the Barbican this week – I seem to be living there at the moment, with a trip to see High Society, followed by a trip to see Mr Handel’s ‘Serse’. This time, it was to see a puppet version of ‘Venus and Adonis‘, a poem written by Shakespeare when all the theatres were closed due to the plague. It was live-narrated by Simon Russell Beale, who is a wonderful actor with a wonderful voice. I loved the way that he interacted with the puppets. The whole thing was very grown up (it’s a very erotic poem) but far from being the ‘puppet porn’ that I was afraid of.

Another reason for all these visits is that the Barbican Centre is going to be closed – admittedly not until June 2028, but still. I hope that in addition to sorting out the infrastructure problems with the ageing building, they might think about improving the signage – every time I go I find myself helping some poor soul who is going round and round in circles trying to find something. Plus, the restaurant could do with some work in my opinion, I was ‘table-ninja’d’ by a group of 8 ladies who were desperate for somewhere to sit, as there are never enough spots, and the seats are also mightily uncomfortable, plus the food ordering system is very counter-intuitive (i.e. you’re never sure which counter to go to ) (sorry!). It’s hoped that building work will be completed by 2030, ahead of the Barbican’s 50th anniversary in 2032. Fingers crossed. For now it’s still one of the most photogenic locations in London (to my mind at least). I can never resist getting my camera out.

But wait, what is this that has sprung up in the middle of the sculpture court?

This is ‘origo’ by Colombian artist Delcy Morelos. On the day I visited we couldn’t walk inside because of the extreme heat, which I think might have had an adverse effect on the soil and clay structure. The soil contains fragrant spices, including cinnamon and cloves, which would have added a whole other dimension I think. This is the first time that there has been a sculpture in the Sculpture Court for more than ten years, such a shame. I like the way that ‘origo’ echoes the shape of the buildings around it – the Barbican was a utopian project when it was first designed, piloting a new way of living in the City, and it seems appropriate that the sculpture is built of the most fundamental of materials, clay, echoing the Brutalis cement constructions that surround it. There are some photos from inside here. See what you think!

Eurasian Otter (Lutra lutra) Photo by Gaurika Wijeratne at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurika/9639580887/

Dear Readers, you might have read about a pioneering project in Somerset, based around the River Tone, which is asking volunteers to try to look at the habitats around the river as if they were not humans, but a particular animal – the participants can choose between an otter, a kestrel, a salmon, an earthworm or a red deer. They are then taught about the lives and senses of their chosen animal, and asked to walk along the river, imagining how their animal might perceive it.

Imagining yourself as an animal has probably been going on for as long as there have been humans (after all, hunters would have needed a deep understanding of the creatures that they hunted) but science gives us a much more detailed appreciation of what the world looks like to say, a bumblebee with its ultra-violet vision, or a salmon picking up the scent of its home river. Of course, it’s not possible to actually ‘be’ the animal, but it did give the volunteers an insight into the lives of their creatures, and especially an understanding of risk.

One participant chose the otter – as otters are so sensitive to vibration, she noticed how the constant  rumble of nearby trains and cars would have disrupted the senses of the animal. She, and another  volunteer who identified with the kestrel, also noticed the ubiquity of dogs. While owners stick to paths, dogs root around everywhere, plus there is a strong body of evidence that the flea treatments given to dogs kill water invertebrates, resulting in less fish. I shall probably write a bit more on this subject soon – there’s a very good article about it in British Wildlife magazine this week. But for now, it’s enough to note that dogs have a profound impact on most species of wildlife, from frightening ground-nesting birds to affecting the hunting sites of kestrels.  There is a good case to be made for having areas where neither humans nor dogs are allowed, but of course this conflicts with the whole ‘right to roam’ ethos.

The emotional responses of the volunteers are very interesting. There’s this, from the Guardian:

‘Phil Tovey, the director of nature-centric approaches at ASRA and a former soldier, said the testimonies they received from the “as-otter”, “as-kestrel” and others were rather like civilians caught in a war zone who struggled to find food, safety or shelter. “We heard that access was deeply stressed. When the volunteers gave their testimonies they were on the verge of tears. They took it so seriously but none of them dramatised it.”

Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) Photo by By Andreas Trepte, http://www.photo-natur.de, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14325567

The River Tone study will be written up as an academic paper, but the project reflects a growing trend in nature conservation, which tries to see the landscape through the eyes of its non-human inhabitants. You might remember an interesting book by Charles Foster, ‘Being a Beast‘, in which he tried on the ‘skin’ of various animals, including a badger, an urban fox and an otter. Does this help us to personalise the threats to a particular animal, and to make us more engaged with them? Does it help a community to take action? It  will be interesting to look at the River Tone project and see what happens. 

You can try out the ‘Risks Beyond Human Eyes’ exercises here.

Expertise comes from ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment), and you can read about them here.

The project was funded by the Ecological Citizens Network and you can read about them here.