Dear Readers, a while back I was waxing lyrical about Nick Hunt’s book ‘Where the Wild Winds Are‘ and so I couldn’t wait to read his latest book, ‘Outlandish’. In it, Hunt goes to four landscapes which are in places where you wouldn’t expect to find them – tundra in Scotland, desert in Spain, the steppe in Hungary and ancient forest in Poland and Belarus. He is a keen and curious observer, who takes delight in the quirky and who finds himself in a variety of ‘interesting’ situations during his travels.

In the section about the tundra, he meets some reindeer, descended from animals first brought to Scotland in the 1950s. He describes them in a passage which captures the otherworldliness of suddenly meeting an animal in its environment, where it is perfectly at home and you are the anomaly.

‘They approach on soft, splayed feet and cross the little bridge, expressing no more than mild interest in our presence….We stand quietly and watch as they bend their mouths to the montane grass, chewing rhythmically. Snowy ruffs sway at their necks. The silver-greyness of their hair is the colour of cooling metal. We count their antlers, furred like moss: two have two: one one: one none. Their sodden pelts are as matted as the land they eat’.

But underlying the sweetness of occasions like this is a sense of how the world is changing. The travelogue is book-ended by tales of The Sphinx, an ice patch in the Cairngorms that normally stays all year. When it first disappeared during the summer in 1933,

…’the Scottish Mountaineering Club declared the event to be so unusual that it was ‘unlikely to happen again’. But it did, in 1953, 1959, 1996,2003,2006, 2017 and 2019……. Snow patches such as these are not only scraps of winter but scraps of history, of deep time. Obvious symbols of endurance, of bloody-minded obstinacy, they are also thermometers that self-destruct as the planet warms. When their last smudges have dripped away, the national thaw will be complete. The British Isles will be entirely free of snow in summer’.

Will the Sphinx still be there when Hunt returns from his adventures, or will it have melted away completely? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

The theme of environmental change and the destruction of these fragile remnant habitats underlies the whole book. In Poland he stays with a group of ‘dirty-handed pseudo-ecologists’, there to defend the Bialowieza forest from government logging. In the desert of Tabernas in Spain, he walks in an unprecedented heatwave, headlined in the local paper as ‘Hell is Coming’. And in the Hungarian steppe country of Hortobágy, he meets a German man and, at the end of a long evening, the man shares what I fear a lot of us are feeling.

‘I do not have hope any more’, he says, this previously smiling man drinking palinka in a horse-drawn trap His voice is getting quieter, guttering with the candle. ‘These places……these places on earth….there are getting less of them. And no one seems to care. The birds are all leaving, and no one cares. What can we do?’

But I wouldn’t want you to think that this is a relentlessly depressing book. Hunt has a way of capturing a moment that I really enjoyed. Here he is, arriving at the guest house where he is staying in Belarus:

‘The village seems deserted apart from the place where I am staying, a ramshackle smallholding in which every resident creature stands out with the totemic clarity of a dream: the black puppy, the honey-coloured dog, the ginger cat, the ginger and white cat, the white geese with their orange beaks, the creamy brown clucking hens, the pair of white storks in their absurd, cartoonish nest. And Natalya, with her pale blue eyes, chapped red face and straw-coloured hair, in a green headscarf and red shoes, carrying eggs in a basket.’

And here he is, in the desert at Tabernas, trying to cope with the rising heat.

‘The heat of the afternoon flattens me, even in the shade. I cannot move or think, can only sit and breathe. The air is heavy, as warm as blood, windless, stultifying. I top up my internal reserves of sweat with sips of water. 

The itchy rhythm of the cicadas switches on and off, an electric circuit being interrupted and reconnected. Impossible to locate, seeming to have no origin point but to be present everywhere, even in the rocks and the air, the manic drill – produced by tymbals, rib-like structures in the abdomen – stops abruptly whenever any creature gets within close range, like a reverse intruder alarm. Never laying eyes on one, I find myself thinking of their noise as a manifestation of the heat itself, as if the temperature has been converted into waveform’. 

And in Hungary, he attends a gathering of the steppe-dwelling peoples from Central Asia and Siberia to China. Hunt describes it as ‘somewhere between a hippy folk festival, a medieval re-enactment fair and, as I will discover, a far-right nationalist rally.’

‘Later that night, during another performance of thundering guitars, I watch — with a hollow, dawning sickness- the unassuming man beside me raise his right arm at an angle of forty-five degrees, palm down, and hold it there. No one pays him any mind. His wife and teenage daughter giggle, a little embarrassed but not ashamed, and then a younger man joins in, smiling happily. The two of them keep it up for song after song until their arms grow tired; afterwards they embrace, as if a special moment has been shared between strangers‘.

Hunt has many gifts, but one is the way that he is able to pull all these disparate threads together. The book is both a celebration of Europe’s ‘outlandish’ places, a warning about the ways that they are changing, and a eulogy for what is already passing. I found it a fascinating and moving read. Highly recommended.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/outlandish/nick-hunt/9781529387391

Dear Readers, a couple of weeks ago I asked what on earth had popped up in a pot in my garden, because I’d completely forgotten what it was. Some kind soul suggested an allium, and I can see why, because this plant is an allium, but a rather unusual one. Known to its friends as Sicilian Honey Garlic (Allium siculum) it was recommended in my Gardening for Wildlife book as one of the very best for bumblebees, and whoever wrote it wasn’t kidding. After a slow and disappointing start I’m now entertained all through my lunch by the way the bumbles negotiate these rather tricky flowers, which necessitate them hanging upside down. It must be worth the effort, though, as you can see from the photo above. The bees can’t get enough of it.

Furthermore this is not the only insect action in my garden today, because I am tripping over the damselflies. The red ones have been about for a while….

Large red damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula)

And the females have been laying their eggs in the pond, whilst grasped around the neck by the males.

But today the azure damselflies have been getting in on the act too. This is all a bit inconvenient as I was going to clear out some of the hornwort, which has gone absolutely nuts as you can see. Now I think I’ll wait for the eggs to hatch and for the little damselflies to migrate to the bottom of the pond.

Azure damselflies Coenagrion puella

Meanwhile, we seem to have another rush of baby starlings after a disappointing May. I wonder how far the parent birds can control when they lay their eggs and raise their young? Do they take one look at the weather and decide to put it off for a bit, do you think? Anyhow, the garden is full of the sound of wheezing once again, and, between that and the bees, I couldn’t be happier.

Young starling

Dear Readers, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve taken a leisurely walk around the County Roads in East Finchley, and I’m not sure why – it would have been a logical thing to do during lockdown, but somehow it seemed as if walking in the local woods or hanging out in the garden was safer, and once a habit has been put in place it’s very hard for me to break it! But on Monday I was happy to have a little walk around and see what was happening, and I was instantly rewarded by this gorgeous, well-loved front garden – it just goes to show how a few well-loved pots can cheer people up.

But the wild plants are very cheering too. I am trying to learn the difference between the two different kinds of bellflower that pop up around these parts. I am fairly sure that this one is Trailing Bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana) – my Harrap’s Wildflower Guide describes the petals as ‘widely spread into a star shape’ so I am feeling fairly confident. It is popular with the bees and seems to grow everywhere, but it came originally from the Dinaric Alps in Serbia.

Trailing Bellflower (Campanula porscharskyana)

And then there’s Adria Bellflower (Campanula portenschlagiana) – the flowers are described as ‘funnel-shaped’ (much longer than wide). This plant comes from the Dalmatian mountains of Croatia originally. I think the one below fits the bill, though the photo isn’t great for ID purposes. In botanical circles the plants are known as ‘posh and port’ which is a lot easier than getting your tongue around the Latin names. To add to the confusion there is also a Peach-leaved Bellflower (Campanula persicifolia) but I haven’t stumbled across that yet. All three are garden escapes which have happily set up home in the crevices and pavements of North London, and I for one am delighted to see them.

Adria Bellflower (Campanula portenschlagiana)

So, what else is going on? Well, in one front garden I see some scarlet pimpernel, the first time I’ve seen any in East Finchley although I was positively tripping over them when I used to go to Dorset. I wonder if a packet of wildflower seeds was involved, or if it got here under its own steam?

Scarlet pimpernel (Lysimachia arvensis)

There was a truly fabulous large-flowered clematis – I normally think of them as not as good for wildlife as the more discreet, small-flowered types, but there was a honeybee collecting the pollen on this one. And it’s difficult not to smile at those flowers.

Bees were hard at work on some hardy geraniums as well – these were a lovely veined pink. I am still campaigning for more species geraniums in gardens, as you can see – they flower for ages and you can cover most of the spring and summer-flowering periods if you pick the right ones.

I was happy to see that lots of people are growing red valerian(Centrathus ruber) too, though I’d like to put a word in for our native white valerian(Valeriana officinalis), which I shall be having a go at once I can find a spare square inch that isn’t already covered in plants. I have seen hummingbird hawkmoths feeding from red valerian, so if that isn’t a reason for growing it, I don’t know what is.

Red valerian (Centrathus ruber)

And how about this rock rose (Cistus) (I think)? Never was a plant so happy in full sun.

And here’s something else I want to grow – some Columbine, another plant that is popular with bees in spite of its complicated flowers. I really like the smaller-flowered dark blue and pink ones, though I have seen some truly spectacular varieties. Who knew that it was a member of the buttercup family? Not me for sure.

Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris)

And finally, I lingered in the church yard of All Saint’s Church in Durham Road to watch the sparrows. At this time of year they eat not only the young chard leaves of my dear friend A, but also nectar (I watched them pecking at the flowers on an indigo bush) and, most especially, insects. I am fairly sure that this female sparrow was pecking the aphids off of the roses. If only she would come round and do the same on my buddleia I would welcome her with the proverbial open arms.

Which just goes to show how much there is to see in a walk around my local streets. I heartily recommend it if you’re feeling a bit uninspired or fed up.