Blimey.

Dear Readers, I am not the most adventurous of souls when it comes to physical peril – I admire all you bungee-jumping/parachute-wearing/white-water rafting types for your chutzpah, while simultaneously wondering why you have such a death-wish. But if you want to see the flying squirrels of Sepilok, you have to take a walk in the canopy. So it was that about ten days ago I found myself on some dodgy looking walkways rather a long way up in the sky. Fortunately they didn’t rock or sway, and it was difficult to see through to the forest floor, so I entertained myself by looking up and not wondering what the shelf-life of a rivet was when exposed to the damp and humidity of the rainforest.

And there was plenty to see. We were primed for flying squirrels: they had ‘nest boxes’ on some of the higher trees, and if you squinted you could occasionally see a little nose poking out.

Flying squirrel nest box

Good evening! (Photo by Toni Burnley)

In fact, some of us (ahem) were so primed that when we saw a broad-winged creature gliding through the trees beneath us, we squawked ‘flying squirrel’. Our long-suffering guide, Hazwan, took a deep breath and announced ‘Wallace’s hawk-eagle’, with only the slightest hint of reprimand. It takes some skill to mistake a feathered creature for a furry one, but there you go.

Wallace’s hawk eagle (Photo by Toni Burnley)

What a splendid creature this is! One of the smallest eagles, it is only about the size of a peregrine falcon. This bird flew up into one of the tallest of the trees, and then flew past us. The more sharp-eyed folk noticed that it was carrying a lizard in its talons.

Photo by John Tomsett

Once in the tree, he was joined by his mate, and he shared the lizard with her.

Photo by John Tomsett

There was then a bout of noisy mating which lasted for the usual ten seconds. I sometimes think that female birds are a bit short-changed in the whole wooing business, though I believe albatrosses are somewhat less perfunctory, and at least this one wasn’t assaulted like female mallards generally are.

In the meantime we also spotted a Bornean green keeled pit viper (Tropidolaemus subannulatus). We’d seen one in the Sun Bear conservation centre earlier in the day, but it’s always nice to see another one. They are extremely varied in colouration (as you can see from the photos below). They are venomous but spend most of their time hanging about in trees waiting for their prey to wriggle or hop past (they eat lizards, frogs, small mammals and birds), and you are safe from damage unless you poke one or get within striking range with your camera.

Keeled pit viper in the BSBCC

Keeled pit viper on the canopy walk

And then it was time to wait for the red giant flying squirrels (Petaurista petaurista) to wake up. We stood on the walkway, well-anointed with Deet, and as the sound from the cicadas and the frogs rose, and the light dimmed, most people fell silent. All except the two middle-aged chaps with a searchlight and enormous cameras standing next to me. They boomed and chattered on as the sky changed from orange to pink to turquoise to indigo. As the flying squirrels emerged from their nest boxes they were suddenly floodlit, like Liza Minelli at a Las Vegas concert. There’s something about those enormous eyes that remind me of said superstar too.

Photo by John Tomsett

Red Giant Flying Squirrel (Photo One)

Red giant flying squirrels eat not only nuts and fruit, like other squirrels, but also eat young leaves and, as with the flying lizard that we saw yesterday, their gliding probably helps them to scout out a bigger area for edibles than would be available if they just jumped from limb to limb like ‘normal’ squirrels. They have a cape of fur from ankle to wrist which gives them a huge surface area, especially when you consider that these animals are almost four feet long from nose to tail, and can weigh up to 7 lbs. I met two giant flying squirrels in the Night Zoo at Singapore a few years ago, where they occupy a huge walkthrough compound. One was sitting on the branch above me, scolding his neighbour in the opposite tree. He looked about the size of a Maine Coon cat, and I thought that I had never met a more unexpected animal. It was as if Tufty the squirrel from my childhood road safety films had been inflated with a foot pump.

Red giant flying squirrel getting ready to fly (Photo by John Tomsett)

Here is a photo of a red-and-white giant flying squirrel gliding. If I was to have to have a beauty contest, I’d say that these guys are very slightly cuter than the red giant flying squirrels, though it would be a close run thing.

Red and White Giant Flying Squirrel. Qinling Mountains (Photo Three)

Red and white giant flying squirrel (Petaurista alborufus) (Photo Four)

And then, one of the squirrels ‘flew’ through the trees, swooping downwards with what I thought was a remarkable resemblance to the Wallace’s hawk eagle seen previously (if you squinted). It landed on a tree about a hundred metres away and scampered up the trunk to repeat the process. I wonder what kind of mental map of their territory they have? It must be in three dimensions, unlike more land-hugging creatures who just have to worry about the width and breadth, not the height.

Having half-blinded the poor rodent, the two talkative types mentioned earlier stomped off at speed along the canopy walk, no doubt en route to damage the eyesight of some other nocturnal creature. We were lucky on our trip – even the keenest photographers in our group were kind to the animals and respectful of the rest of us. Some people seem to treat wildlife as just something to ‘capture’ on the camera, and then to move on, whereas for me it doesn’t matter so much if an animal is familiar because there is always some new behaviour to witness, something new to learn. It’s so good to deepen a relationship with a species, and this has been a trend for me as I’ve gotten older – I am no longer so stimulated by novelty. None of which takes away from the sheer joy of meeting an animal that you’ve only seen on wildlife documentaries in the flesh, for the first time.

Red giant flying squirrel considering his next move (Photo by Toni Burnley)

And then it was off along the canopy walkway, passing scorpions and giant ants on the way. Tomorrow, I will be reporting on our trip to the Sukau Rainforest Lodge, perched on the banks of the Kinabantangan River, where we encountered a most unexpected creature enjoying himself in the water.

Sun Bear at the BSBCC (Photo by Sue Burnley)

Dear Readers, just across the way from the Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre is a smaller reserve for the rehabilitation of Bornean sun bears (Helarctos malayanus eurysipilus). These are the world’s smallest bears, and the second most endangered, after the giant panda.The centre was founded by Wong Siew Te, a passionate wildlife biologist who was on site when we visited, and who was a fount of knowledge on the individual bears, and on the challenges that face them.

Photo by Caroline Hooper

As with all Bornean animals, habitat is key: sun bears spend a lot of time in the trees (their small size means they can climb higher than any other bear), and they have a passion for the honey of the stingless bee. When this isn’t available, they rake into logs with their long claws, looking for grubs and termites. They are often accompanied by insect-eating ground birds such as the Bornean crested fireback pheasant, who snatch any invertebrates that the bears have missed.  The bears are reliant on the huge trees of the dipterocarp forest to provide them with food, and, as we saw when we talked about orang utans, the fact that these trees only fruit occasionally puts severe pressure on the bears: they may starve in the years between fruiting, and it is probably a major factor in their small size.

Bornean crested fireback pheasant (Lophura ignita) (Photo Two)

As these forests have largely been destroyed, the sun bears have lost their homes. They do not feed on the oil palms that replace them, although they do have a taste for coconuts, and have remarkably strong jaws that enable them to crunch into the nuts. Sadly, the loss of the forests brings the bears into contact with their only predators, humans: as with orang utans, the mothers are shot so that the delightfully cute cubs can be taken as pets. Unfortunate as this is, some bears will be raised for to be ‘farmed’ for their bile, which is an ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine. I can’t help but think that this is the worst fate of all.

Sun Bear getting stuck into a coconut – Photo by John Tomsett

At the rehabilitation centre, the bears are gradually introduced back into a more natural life. At first, bears who have been kept in tiny cages are released into a slightly larger cage – going into a big open space would be deeply troubling for them. Some of the bears display stereotypic behaviour at first, pacing or rocking. Wong Siew Te was very concerned about this – when one of the bears came out into the forest part of the reserve, he watched closely.

‘Why are you pacing?’ he mused. ‘What’s the problem?’

And then he realised that one of the other bears was a bit too close, and the pacing bear was stressed. After a bit of snuffling and roaring, the bears seemed to work it out, and both bears went away to forage, seemingly reconciled.As with humans, stress of any kind can be the trigger for old behaviours that helped to manage anxiety, be it nail-biting, obsessively looking at the internet or pacing. We are not so unique as we like to think.

Photo by John Tomsett

The BSBCC currently has 43 sun bears in its care. It has managed to release seven bears into protected forest, but the process is extremely difficult unless the bear is found when it is very young. Once habituated to humans, sun bears can be dangerous, and so can’t be released in parks where there are humans. They used to have a fearsome reputation among local peoples: the bears were known as ‘nundun’, and it was said that if it was fruiting season, the bears would gather together and attack en masse. It is easy, when looking at these cute little faces, to forget that these are wild animals with some of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom.

Romolina, a tiny bear cub who weighed only 5.95kg on arrival at the conservation centre. She is doing very well! (Photo One)

It was inspiring to hear Wong Siew Te talk about the sun bears in his care – he knew the personality of every single one, and you can share his enthusiasm here. He also didn’t mince his words about his concerns for the forest and the future of the bears and the other wildlife of Borneo. At this point in the holiday I hadn’t seen for myself how extensive the destruction of the forest had been, and how much of the landscape is dominated by oil palm plantations. While some of our guides were hopeful about the use of sustainable palm oil, others were scathing.

Photo by John Tomsett

What a lovely place the BSBCC was! I wandered to the second viewing platform, which had a display showing each of the bears, the circumstances in which they were rescued, their personalities and their habits. I plonked down on a bench, only to see a lizard fly across a clearing and land on a tree trunk. When I stopped gibbering and pointing, I realised that I had seen ‘the’ flying lizard that features regularly in wildlife documentaries. He’s only a little chap, and when he’s on a tree trunk you wouldn’t give him a second glance. This one was displaying by popping out a yellow ‘flag’ under his chin, probably to warn off other males.

Flying Lizard (Draco volans)

However, he has ‘wings’ that extend from his ribs, and enable him to glide from tree to tree.

Bornean flying lizard showing its ‘wings’ (Photo Two)

There are a multitude of gliding animals in Borneo – in addition to the flying lizard there are snakes, geckos, squirrels, frogs and ‘lemurs’ who all ‘fly’ from tree to tree. There have been several theories about why Borneo might be such a hotspot, but the one that makes most sense to me relates, again, to the fruiting patterns of those dipterocarp trees. Because the fruit supply is intermittent, it is likely that the insects and small animals that feed on the fruit is also widely dispersed and occasional. It makes sense that animals develop a way to range widely, and efficiently, without having to be climbing up and down those massive trees all the time. If you would like to admire the gliding skills of Borneo’s snakes and reptiles, there’s a very nice video from National Geographic here.

Well, by now we were all a bit hot and sweaty (I don’t think the temperature dropped below 30 degrees the whole time we were in Borneo, and the humidity is punishing for a poor pale Englishwoman like me). But tonight we went off for a walk in the canopy to see if we could see any flying squirrels, and that is another adventure…..

Dear Readers, you might remember that on Monday, my Dad was admitted to hospital with a chest infection. He was on a Covid-19 ward, waiting for his test results to come back to see if he had the virus. We were all pretty confident that the test would come back clear – Dad’s nursing home has been in lockdown for weeks – but he was very distressed at being in a strange environment. He was being given intravenous antibiotics but overnight he pulled out his canula, his catheter and anything else attaching him to a machine. As he is on blood-thinning tablets, the amount of blood was apparently impressive.

Yesterday my brother got a call that Dad was very poorly, and was now on palliative care only. This was a shock as he seemed to have been holding up pretty well. I spoke to the nurse, and asked if I needed to come now.

‘I wouldn’t leave it too long’, she said.

So, I headed down on the empty tube train to an empty Waterloo and took the three hour journey to the hospital. It wasn’t difficult to Social Distance as there was barely anyone about. In W.H. Smiths there were more staff trying to make sure that people kept six feet away from one another than there were customers. I had a carriage on the South Western Railways train to Dorchester all to my self. When I got to Dorchester it was a ghost town.

The hospital, usually so bustling, was eerily empty. I got the lift to the second floor (the ward is familiar from frequent hospital stays by Mum and Dad in the past). When I opened the lift doors, a nice young man asked me to wait because someone was being brought in by ambulance, and so we waited until a grey-faced elderly gentleman in an oxygen mask was brought in.

I went to the ward. One of the nurses intercepted me.

‘You’re aware that this is a Covid-19 ward’?

‘Yes’, I said, ‘But I think my father is dying’.

She nodded and sent me into the ‘quiet room’ to await a nurse to help me to gown up to go in to see Dad. The palliative care nurse popped in, and told me that they’d stopped all invasive procedures, were giving Dad his antibiotics when he’d take them, and were giving him small doses of Fentanyl if he seemed particularly distressed, but that he wasn’t on a morphine driver at the moment. I told her that my one big wish would be to get Dad back to his nursing home if he tested negative for the virus – I know that he would be less distressed and more relaxed in a familiar environment. She said that she would do what she could, but I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to make me feel better.

Then the nurse came to fit me with an apron, gloves and a face mask. I had no idea that the face masks were only good for about twenty minutes before you need a new one. She took me through the procedures when I was leaving the room – gloves and apron off on the ward, hands washed, come out, mask off once I was out of the room. She showed me how to pinch the mask so that it fits the face better.

And then I went in to see Dad who was, of course, out for the count, as usual.

I held his hand and told him all the things that I’d want him to know if, as seemed likely, I might never see him again. I cried into my mask which is a most unpleasant experience. His breathing was bad, but I remembered how Mum’s breathing had been in the days before she died, and his didn’t seem the same somehow. I couldn’t bear to leave him, but I had to.

Walking out of the six-bed ward, empty except for Dad, was such a hard thing to do.

One of the nurses, a strapping chap from Hull, made me a cup of tea, and asked me about Dad. It transpired that Dad had gotten very angry about being contained and had punched him in the stomach.

‘He’s still strong, your Dad. I wouldn’t write him off just yet’, said the long-suffering nurse. And when I apologised for Dad, and said it wasn’t normal for him to be violent, he just laughed.

‘All part of the job’, he said.

And that is one reason why our NHS staff deserve so much more than they currently get, in every single way.

I wondered if I could stay over in Dorchester so that I could see Dad again but, quite rightly, all the hotels and B&B’s are either closed or, like the one that I normally stay at, being used for NHS frontline staff. It seemed that it might be the last time that I ever saw Dad alive.

I caught the train back home, crying all the way, so just as well the carriage was empty.

When I looked back along the platform at Waterloo, I saw that exactly five people had gotten off the ten coach train.

And then, this morning, I heard that:

a) The Covid-19 test had come back negative

b) Dad had taken his medication

c) Dad was sitting up in bed eating his breakfast

d) The hospital were going to release him back to his nursing home today.

So, it will still be pretty much impossible to go and visit Dad until the restrictions are lifted, and he is still a very sick man, but at least he will back in familiar surroundings, with people who know him, and who have excellent palliative care skills. It is such a relief to know that he is back where he belongs. But kudos to the staff at the hospital, who have done an amazing job with someone who can be a difficult patient, and who have managed to keep him well enough to go home. I am more grateful than I can express for this reprieve, however temporary.

Dear Readers,  when I was choosing a place to visit for my sixtieth birthday it was the orang-utans of Borneo that finally made up my mind. I have spent time in the past with chimpanzees and gorillas, but have never had the opportunity to meet one of these ‘men of the forest’. So, my holiday started off with several visits to Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, a 43 sq kilometre protected reserve in Sabah. This was founded in 1964 to look after orphaned orang-utans, and the need has never been greater. We shall (sadly) return to this subject over the next few days, but as you probably know, logging and palm oil production has destroyed the majority of Malaysia and Indonesia’s primary forest, and so the orang utans are left homeless. When the mother apes wander into the palm oil plantations they are often killed, and babies fetch a high price if sold to the idle rich in many countries – a man was recently apprehended at the airport with a drugged baby orang in a rattan basket. Fortunately, this little one was rehabilitated and will be released into the wild.

Sepilok has been remarkably successful at rehabilitating the baby orangs that it rescues. At first, the babies are completely cared for by humans, but once they are well they go through a programme of ‘skills training’, teaching them to climb, to identify the many different types of food that are available in the forest – each new baby is paired up with an older ‘buddy’ who teaches them the ropes. Eventually, they are released into protected forest, either at Sepilok or further afield. Visitors can only access a small part of the reserve and are confined to walkways. We are not allowed to get closer than 15 metres to any orangs that are hanging around – a Sepilok employee with a small bamboo stick will try to encourage the visitors to step back or move on, though some idiots do seem to think that their photos are more important. Generally the best views are at the feeding platforms – some food is left at these sites twice a day, so that newly released apes have a chance to supplement their diets. Apparently the food left here is deliberately monotonous, so that the orangs become bored and go elsewhere to forage.

While we were there, a wild mother brought her baby to the feeding sites. It is so moving to see the way that the baby was always in physical contact with his mum, keeping one hand entangled in her fur at all times.

A female baby will stay with her mother for about eight years, but the boys hang around for ten to twelve years – the outside world is a dangerous place for a young inexperienced male. There are no real predators of adult orang utans, apart from the odd enormous python (one that was nine metres long turned up at a logging camp), though clouded leopards will take a baby if they get a chance.

Orangs have the greatest difference in size between male and female of any ape – the big ‘flanged males’ are double the size of the females. Why has this happened? Firstly, not all males develop the typical fatty pads around their necks and throat that dominant males do – some males remain in a state of arrested development and are much less conspicuous. It’s these smaller, subordinate males that will force themselves upon  a lone female if they happen to find one. Females may prefer the big flanged males because they offer them more protection, and seem to be generally more appealing than the little guys – big males also have some unique vocalisations that they use to attract females, so maybe they are also honey-voiced seducers.

But why don’t all males develop fully? One reason probably relates to the nature of the forest that they live in. The majority of the trees there are known as dipterocarps (meaning ‘winged fruit’ – their seeds resemble those of the sycamore). These trees only fruit occasionally, sometimes every ten years, and all the trees in an area come into flower at the same time. This provides an occasional bonanza, but the rest of the time it’s slim pickings for all the animals. I suspect that the forest couldn’t support a population of orangs where all the males reached full maturity. I wasn’t lucky enough to see an adult male on this visit, but they are magnificent animals.

Dominant Bornean Orang Utan male (Photo One)

Subordinate male (Photo Two)

It was a real privilege to be able to watch these extraordinary animals at Sepilok, and we were very lucky – the reserve was closed to visitors because of Covid-19  the day after we left. I was pleased to see how carefully the staff were managing their interactions with the apes – keeping their distance and wearing proper face masks when they had to have hands-on contact with the youngest babies. Apes are extremely susceptible to our diseases, and even a coronavirus such as the common cold can be fatal for great apes – I dread to think what Covid-19 could do. I note that treks to see the mountain and lowland gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda have been suspended for a while, which is a relief. We have barely come to terms with the effect of the disease on other humans, let alone our closest relations.

Wild mother orang and baby at the nursery feeding station

Mother visiting the feeding station and spending time with her adolescent son.

Youngster just hanging around…

And I wouldn’t be Bugwoman if I wasn’t also intrigued by the insects. How about this chap?

Lantern bug

This is a true ‘bug’ of the Fulgoridae family, but although it is called a lantern bug it isn’t actually luminescent, and as far as I can see no one has worked out what the ‘nose’ is for. Still, it is a splendid insect, and apparently its mouthparts can tap directly into the sap of the tree. Very little is known about these insects, as is often the case in the tropics – there is such an abundance of species, and the habitat is so challenging, that these creatures are very under-studied. How splendid they are, though!

Malayan Owl butterfly (Neorina iowii)

And I managed to get a shot of the Malayan owl butterfly (Neorina iowii) – there were many, many beautiful butterflies and moths, but most of theme seemed to be on a mission and it was very difficult to keep up with them as they zoomed through the undergrowth. Plus, did I mention that Borneo has leeches? One wouldn’t want to career through a shrub without one’s leech socks on. Still, this butterfly, with its very pale eyespots, was most obliging. Its wings were like black-blue velvet.So, tomorrow we will remain at Sepilok, but we will leave the orang utans and make haste to see the sun bears at their rehabilitation centre just across the way. In the meantime, have an imaginary glass of Bornean ginger beer (ginger grows everywhere) and I’ll ‘see’ you soon.

Waterlily in frog pond, Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Borneo

Dear Readers, it has been a remarkable few weeks. On Friday 13th March I headed off for my big 60th birthday trip to Borneo, something that I’d been planning for over a year. At the time there were no travel advisories for Malaysia, and the main problems with Covid-19 seemed to be in China (where it was seemingly coming under control), Italy (in lockdown) and South Korea. Malaysia had a small number of cases, and Singapore, where we were heading to at the end of the trip, had the best results of any country in containing the disease. However, for the past ten days it has felt as if we are surfing just ahead of a huge wave. Singapore was closed, so that part of the trip was cancelled. Malaysia announced a lockdown, so no new tourists arrived. We were the last visitors at each place that we stayed, and the staff and guides at the lodges had no idea when they’d be able to work again after we left. Our plane home, on Sunday night, was packed with people who’d gotten stuck all over Asia. Out of 60 planes leaving from Kota Kinabalu, 56 were cancelled. I am so grateful and lucky to be home, and am also full of sadness, both for the beautiful but benighted country that I visited, and for the terrible effects of this virus. And don’t get me started on the inadequate responses of our own government.

So, I have lots of things to share with you, and I will start a daily blog from Thursday so that I can take you all with me on my Borneo adventure (minus the mosquito bites). But first, I wanted to check in with you and see how you are all doing. I know that different places are in different degrees of lockdown, but here in the UK all non-essential shops are closed along with schools, churches, and other meeting places. Physical distancing is supposed to be observed, with a 2 metre gap between people who don’t live together when in public spaces. You can go out to exercise once a day (and I’ve already had a brisk walk around Coldfall Wood, where most people seem to have got the message about keeping their distance). The police now have powers to enforce the closures and physical distancing but it will be interesting to see how that goes. The measures are supposed to be reviewed in three weeks, but realistically I expect this to last for a good few months at least. I am able to work from home, which is great, and for me I think that the key will be to get into a routine – it would be so easy to disappear into a black hole of online Covid-19 news and general nonsense. I recognise, again, how lucky I am in so many ways: I am in good health, my husband is also my best friend so we won’t be throwing things at one another as the weeks go on, and it’s easy to get to the local shops that are open for food. I am joining one of the local voluntary support groups so that I can help with shopping or picking up medications for people who are totally self-isolating, and that will help me feel connected. Plus, the garden is full of birds and the fritillaries are in bloom, so nature, as always, helps to make me feel grounded.

Bornean Daddy Long Legs spider

My biggest worry is Dad. His nursing home has been in lockdown for several weeks now, with no visitors allowed. On Sunday he developed a chest infection and was admitted to the local hospital. He is now improving, but has to await the results of a COVID-19 test, which is taking two days. This seems like a very long time to wait for test results – if Dad is getting better I suspect he doesn’t have the virus, and therefore is blocking a bed for someone who is much sicker than him. Plus, his dementia makes him extremely distressed in unfamiliar surroundings, and visitors are strictly limited. Fortunately his favourite carer from the home is going to see if there’s any way that she can get in to see him today, which will help, and hopefully he’ll test clear and be out on Wednesday. These situations always make me feel helpless, and it’s even worse when I can’t get down to see him myself.

Pig-tailed macaques in Sukau, Borneo

So, I would love to know how you’re holding up under the strain of the current situation. It’s an anxiety-provoking time for us all, and we will need one another more than ever. How are you spending your time? Are you, like me, looking at the clutter and deciding that this might be the time to make life a bit simpler? Are you able to get out into the garden or into nature? What hobbies or pastimes calm your nerves? And do you have any advice for the rest of us? We are living through a historic time, and there will be lessons to be learned that will resonate through the years to come. How we look after ourselves and one another may give us valuable information about the kind of world that we want to live in going forward.

Spiders Web, Sukau, Borneo

A wet August

Dear Readers, here is my belated report for August 2019 to January 2020. If all goes according to plan (and that’s a big ‘if’ at the moment) I will be on the other side of the world when this is published, gathering some new experiences to share with you all. But for today, let’s go back in time and celebrate the goings-on of last year. It started with a very wet and humid August, and on one morning I sat on my doorstep and watched the snails going about their business. I rather enjoyed just plonking down and taking the time to really breathe and notice. The time to do this was just about to get rather shorter, as I started work in September, but August was full of memories of coleus, and admiration of cardoons.

Autumnal red coleus

Cardoons abuzz with bees

September saw a trip to Walthamstow Wetlands, where the great crested grebes were already courting. It was a great spot for Wednesday Weeds as well, with tansy and bladder campion. And as I started work in the City, I found myself on a hunt for a green space, without much initial luck.

Courting great crested grebes at Walthamstow Wetlands

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)

Bladder Campion (Silene vulgaris)

The ‘garden’ on the site of St Martin Orgar church, with its artificial turf.

October saw my first ever ivy bees, in the grounds of the National Archive at Kew. I found a more promising green space in the Cleary Garden in the City, and remembered how it had been a favourite spot for Mum, too. It was in the Cleary Garden that I became enamoured of the magnificent swamp cypress, too. And, on a visit to see Dad in his nursing home, I heard about his escapades as ‘Captain Tom‘, steering a boat from Weymouth to Portland. Seeing Dad so happy and excited as he told me about the trip was one of my highlights of the year.

Ivy bee (Colletes hederae)

The memorial to Fred Cleary, who helped to found the Cleary Gardens

Swamp Cypress (Taxodium distichum)

Cones on the swamp cypress. What a wonderful tree.

Dad aka Captain Tom. One of my favourite humans

November saw a rumination on the things that Mum taught me, and all the things that I owe to her. It would have been her 84th birthday, and I am learning that as the time goes by the grief is not as all-consuming, but there are still tender spots and emotional bruises. I suspect there always will be, and in a way I’m glad. The measure of what someone meant to us is how much we miss them when they’re gone. Life continues, but is never the same again.

A cabbage with a demon trapped inside it?

I revisited the swamp cypress, and glory hallulujah, what an extraordinary sight it was.

Swamp cypress at the Cleary Garden in the City of London. My favourite tree.

There were Dutch elm disease-resistant elms planted in the heart of the City, and a lot of autumn beauty much closer to home in East Finchley.

New Horizon elms on Queen Victoria Street

Autumn in East Finchley

Autumn in East Finchley

December saw cranberries, kale, an intrepid squirrel and a visit to Dorchester to see Dad.

Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon)

Curly kale (Brassica oleraceae)

Dad in his new hat, wearing his Christmas tie.

And then it was January. Work was crazy, with year end and an audit to contend with. Some of the load was taken off by the loan of a trail camera, which enabled me to see exactly what went on in the garden when I wasn’t there. I had a couple of trips to cemeteries, which always cheers me up. And it gave me a chance to ruminate on almonds, which was something that I’d never considered before. Finally, it was my sixtieth birthday, which gave me a chance to wax philosophical on all manner of things.

Night One

Night Two

Islington and St Pancras cemetery

East Finchley Cemetery

And here, for no particular reason, is a photo of the dog fox who visited every day for a few weeks back in September. He was the most confident animal, and one day I found him sitting on the wall as if he was waiting for me to turn up. He’d have gone into the house if I’d let him. He had no fear of anything, and this was his undoing, as a few weeks after this picture was taken he was run down by a car and killed. However, there are foxes around here who look a lot like him, and I would love to think that his offspring are still trotting about, although hopefully they have a little more road sense. He was much loved in the County Roads, and was as much part of the community as some of the people. Long may his genes continue.

Another handsome fox. Just because….

Eva Jospin, Foret Palatine 2019-20

I do love an exhibition that centres on the natural world, and way that artists have responded to it. ‘Among the Trees’, which just opened at the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank, aims to ‘bring together artworks that ask us to think about trees and forests in different ways’. I found the show a bit of a jumble of ideas, trying to cram a bit too much into a few small spaces, but there is some great stuff here, and lots of food for thought.Take Eva Jospin’s ‘Foret Palatine’ for example. The sculpture takes up an entire wall, and looks like a forest from a (rather Grimm) fairy tale. What makes it fascinating is that it is made entirely from cardboard – trees made out of trees. Few things here are exactly what they seem.

I love sculpture, and there are several interesting examples here. ‘Cold Moon’, by Ugo Rodinone, is one of a series of twelve casts of ancient trees, between 1500 and 2000 years old. This particular cast is from an olive tree, twisted and contorted by years of sun, wind and water. It’s beautiful in the way that an elderly person’s face is beautiful, shaped by the experiences of their lives.

Cold Moon (2011) Ugo Rondinone

This work is called ‘Plastic Tree II’, by Pascale Marthine Tayou, from Cameroon. The artist likes to work with the juxtaposition of natural and man-made materials, and between the living and the artificial. This is a bright and happy piece, but like several pieces here, it feels as if it misses the mark a bit – surely something so dangerous as single-use plastic shouldn’t be so joyful? Or maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon. It has been known.

I rather liked the piece below, however. It’s by the German artist Mariele Neudecker, and it’s called ‘And Then the World Changed Colour: Breathing Yellow’. The sculpture is in a tank, underwater – close up, you can see the bubbles appearing along the branches. It is lit with an unearthly queasy yellow-green light, and I felt as if I was being invited in, but that the invitation would not necessarily be to my advantage. This was something that I could have looked at for a long time. There is a sense of the ‘drowned world’ about it that seems appropriate considering the way that it doesn’t seem to have stopped raining since about October.

There are lots of paintings too, old school though they are. Here is a piece by American artist Kirsten Everberg called ‘White Birch Grove, South (After Tarkovsky). The piece was inspired by Tarkovsky’s film ‘Ivan’s Childhood’, in which the birch forest is a place of both enchantment and entrapment for young Ivan. I found the painting claustrophobic, and the longer I looked, the more human faces and eyes I was able to see. The trees feel like soldiers, or lost spirits.

The natural resilience of trees was illustrated in a series of photos taken by Zoe Leonard, of trees in New York City. The bark of these trees is growing through and around the fences that confine them, absorbing and covering the barbed wire and the mesh. The result is a scar, but an honourable one.

In another photograph by Rachel Sussman (who has a series of photos of ancient trees in the exhibition) we see an old friend: the Jomon Sugi, a Japanese Cedar estimated to be between 2000 and 7200 years old. It is interesting to see the twisted thorny twig fence, probably intended to protect the tree from the inevitable souvenir hunters.

I really liked these two paintings as well. What appears at first to be a simple depiction of a rainforest scene becomes, on closer study, an incredibly detailed depiction of the ecosystem. The artist, Abel Rodriguez, is an elder of the Nonuya people, who live on the Cahuinairi river in the Colombian Amazon.  He learned everything he knows about plants and animals from his uncle, and taught himself to draw. In the 1990’s, he and his family had to leave the region due to armed conflict, but he has continued to make images of his forest home, showing the landscape in different conditions and at different times of year.

There were also two video installations. I was intrigued by Jennifer Steinkamp’s animated trees, which sway and grow and drop their leaves in spite of being made of nothing but pixels. A whole year is compressed into three minutes, but this feels a bit like the way we’re going – artificiality and speed seem to be everything.

Jennifer Steinkamp’s Blind Eye

The exhibit that I enjoyed most, though, was the giant horizontal spruce tree depicted by Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Horizontal-Vaakasuora. This is a real tree, and the soundtrack is full of the sounds of the wind and the chirping of birds. The decision by Ahtila to show the tree on its side was a practical one: few venues would have a room high enough to show the tree vertically. Cutting it into sections means that the tree sways in different directions and at different rates, meaning that every time you think you are watching something ‘real’, there is a disconnect and it becomes clear that you are not.

So, ‘Among the Trees’ is well worth a look, even though it is a bit of a jumble. Some have commented that it doesn’t say enough about the relationship between trees and human beings, and how that relationship has lost its way. Others have said that the exhibition feels ‘scattergun‘. For me, it feels as if someone has said ‘let’s put together a lot of varied and interesting work about trees’ without any overweening view of what those works should say. It sometimes feels as if the exhibits are shouting at one another across the gallery, but there is much to enjoy here. I could sit and watch the horizontal tree for half an hour and feel better at the end of it, for one thing.

‘Among the Trees‘ is at the Hayward Gallery until 17th May.

Giant Honey Flower (Melianthus major)

Dear Readers, I am being completely self-indulgent this week. I was so taken by this plant when I walked past it at the Business Design Centre in Islington that I had to find out some more about it. I have never seen anything quite like it: look at those flowers, which remind me of feather dusters or possibly one of the late Ken Dodd’s tickling sticks.

Statue of Ken Dodd with his tickling stick at Liverpool Lime Street station (Photo One)

Giant Honeyplant comes originally from South Africa (home to so many interesting plants) where it is known as kruidjie-roer-my-nie (herb touch me not) in Afrikaans. It is a member of the Francoaceae family, a wholly new family to me – another member of the group are the Bridal Wreathes from Chile, which are also splendid plants but are clearly not quite as extravagant as our Wednesday Weed.

Bridal Wreath (Francoa sonchifolia) (Photo Two)

Now, our plant looks fairly inoffensive sitting outside the Business Design Centre, but in South Africa it is apparently also known as ‘Smellyanthus’, for the  distinctive musky odour of the flowers. However, the crushed leaves are also said to have the perfume of salted peanut butter, which is surely a good thing? South African readers, help me out here! At least the plant doesn’t smell of liquorice which would be the end of the story as far as I’m concerned. I suspect that the cold, wet, windy weather that we’ve been having doesn’t encourage any odours, pleasant or otherwise, to reveal themselves to my poor cold nose. I shall have to have another sniff when/if summer comes.

In the UK, the plant is usually grown for its rather beautiful foliage: popular TV gardener Monty Don says that he has had a specimen for many years that has never flowered, so I don’t know how ‘my’ plants have been persuaded into bloom (probably by being raised in a greenhouse I imagine). They need lots of water but also free-draining soil (so no chance for me then), and are said to not be frost-hardy. Mr Don recommends cutting the plant back hard in early spring rather than trying to nurse them through the winter, and says that new shoots will pop up like magic.

Photo Three

In South Africa the bright red flowers are bird-pollinated, as so many blooms of this kind are. Sun birds are particularly fond of the copious nectar, and a female or juvenile bird is pictured below getting stuck in.

Southern double-collared sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) on giant honey flower (Photo Four)

I cannot resist showing you what the male looks like too.

Male double-collared sunbird (Photo Five)

For all this musky honey and peanut butter, however, giant honey flower is poisonous: it contains bufadienolides, named for the Bufo genus of toads (which includes our European toad, Bufo bufo). The skin of toads exudes a toxic slime which means that animals that pick up one of the amphibians in the hope of a quick meal often back off, foaming at the mouth and clawing at their jaws. The chemical in giant honey flower acts directly on the heart, causing tachycardia, or fibrillation, or a lethal heart attack. Goodness. As if this wasn’t enough, it also contains cardiac glycosides, which are also found in foxgloves (hence digitalis) and lily-of-the-valley.

However, the black nectar that is fed on by sunbirds is also feasted on by bees, and the Plants Africa website mentions that it makes good honey. The plant has also been used extensively in African traditional medicine, for abscesses and boils, sore throats and backache, painful feet and aching joints. It is also considered a cure for snake bite. Being toxic presumably means that the plant has a lot of active chemical compounds, and maybe local people have learned to harness the power of the plant. Anyone without such skills should be definitely be wary.

And finally, a poem. This is by Sean Borodale, a poet that I haven’t come across before, but I really like his work: this poem is from Bee Journal, a year in the life of an apiarist. . When I read about this honey, I think of the black nectar oozing from the flowers of Melianthus major. Although from a sunnier place, I wonder if it, too, would have a feral tang.

12th November: Winter Honey by Sean Borodale

To be honest, this is dark stuff; mud, tang
of bitter battery-tasting honey. The woods are in it.

Rot, decayed conglomerates, old garlic leaf, tongue
wretched
by dead tastes, stubborn crystal, like rock. Ingredients:

ivy, sweat, testosterone, the blood of mites. Something
human
in this flavour surely.

Had all the clamber, twist and grip
of light-starved roots, and beetle borehole dust.

Deciduous flare of dead leaf,
bright lights leached out like gypsum almost, alabaster
ghost.

Do not think this unkind, the effect is slow
and salty in the mouth. A body’s widow in her dying
year.

It is bleak with taste and like meat, gamey.

This is the offal of the flowers’ nectar.
The sleep of ancient insects runs on this.

Giant’s Causeway hexagons we smeared on buttered toast
or just the pellets gouged straight from wax to mouth.

Try this addiction:
compounds of starched-cold, lichen-grey light. What else seeps
out?

Much work, one bee, ten thousand flowers a day,
to make three teaspoons-worth of this
disconcerting
solid broth
of forest flora full of fox. Immune to wood shade now.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Rodhullandemu – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17822845

Photo Two by By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=301268

Photo Three by By JMK – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34476738

Photo Four by By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Southern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalibeus) female or juvenile on Honey Flower (Melianthus major), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56466815

Photo Five from By Mikegoulding – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10874504