Dear Readers, I might have mentioned before that a variety of ‘exotic’ trees have been planted in the County Roads in East Finchley, amongst them this rather fetching Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum). I can’t believe that I missed it flowering, but maybe next year I’ll pay more attention.

Seeing this tree reminds me  of the Judas Tree which was just around the corner from where I worked in  the City of London – I was desperately looking for somewhere green (the City of London has less green space than any other London Borough) and after some searching I found a couple of spots  where I could rest my weary gaze when looking at spreadsheets got too much. I never did see this tree in flower either, but maybe one day I shall take myself back and say hello to it. These fine old trees, hidden  amongst all the stone and concrete, are valuable trees indeed.

And now, let’s go back a couple of years for a look at the Judas Tree.

Dear Readers, I do hope that you’ll forgive the preponderance of tree-based posts over the past few weeks. It’s difficult to find more herbaceous species in the winter, plus I am intrigued by the variety of street trees around my office in the City of London. They are a solace when I’m overcome by the busyness and the sheer number of people, and I have come to see some of them as individuals: the swamp cypress in the Cleary Garden and the Indian bean tree in St Olave’s Court come to mind immediately. They have a lot to teach us about resilience and stoicism, about bending to circumstance and about making the most of resources. Plus, they are extremely good company, quiet, dignified and unlikely to want you to explain your spreadsheet in minute detail.

So, this week I am turning my attention to the Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum). It comes from Southern Europe and Western Asia, and is a protected tree in Israel. The Cercis family is a genus in the pea family, Fabaceae, and this should come as no surprise if one looks closely at the flowers. The name ‘Cercis‘ comes from the Greek for ‘weaver’s shuttle’, which refers to the shape of the seedpods (see the photo below).

The one in the photo above cascades out of its bed at the back of the Guildhall, opposite the gardens of St Mary Aldmanbury. The church here was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, rebuilt and then bombed flat in the Blitz in 1940. The remains were taken and reconstructed in the grounds of Westminster College, Missouri as a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill.

But I digress, as usual. The only other Judas tree that I know of is also related to a ruined church, on Marylebone High Street – it is in the Garden of Rest next to the Marylebone Elm, one of the Great Trees of London. The name ‘Judas tree’ comes from the legend that Judas Iscariot, full of shame after his betrayal of Jesus, hanged himself from a branch of the tree, so I wonder if its appearance in churchyards is a result of its Biblical connotations. The tree is supposed to have turned its flowers from white to red as a mark of its disgrace, although Paul Wood points out in ‘London’s Street Trees’ that many of the cultivars to be found in the Capital have white flowers.

What flowers, though! They burst straight out of the bark, and I look forward to revisiting ‘my’ tree in the spring.

Sometimes the flowers dangle from the tree, however, and the seedpods certainly do, giving the appearance of little people hanging from the branches if you have a macabre turn of mind. I think that you would have to squint very hard to find that idea plausible. It is also said that if you tell a lie under a Judas tree you will drop dead, which makes a change, as regular readers will know, from dropping dead if you bring the flowers into the house. Yet another source mentions that the tree is a favourite haunt of witches, and that it is dangerous to go near it at night. The tree bears such a lot of negative connotations that it’s no wonder that the one that I saw is bowed over.

Other scholars, however, say that the name ‘Judas tree’ is a corruption of the French name for the plant, Arbre de Judée, meaning ‘Tree of Judea’, an area where the tree is commonly found, so all of the Judas myths might be founded on a misapprehension.

The flowers are pollinated by bees, but yet another folktale tells that the nectar is poisonous, and kills whoever feeds on the flowers. Not so, but handy as a cautionary tale to beware of temptation. In fact, the flowers are edible and are often pickled or thrown into a salad to add a touch of colour. The young leaves can also be eaten in salads.

In North America, the blossom of the closely related redbud trees (Cercis canadensis in the east of the continent, Cercis occidentalis in the west) is often used in the same way, and in fact the redbud is another London street tree, in particular the Forest Pansy variety, with its orange, red and purple foliage. It would be surprising if a city as diverse as London didn’t reflect this in its trees, and a walk around the City can often feel as interesting as a trip to a botanical garden.

Now, in the search for references to the Judas tree, I came across the sculptor Michael Winstone. Without understanding for a second exactly what he does, I found his work interesting, with an erotic tinge. What I do know is that each sculpture is based on a computer-scan of the bark of a particular tree, in this case a Judas tree (actually an Eastern redbud, but we’ll let him off). The computer then ‘grows’ this pattern organically, to make a form that is part tree, part human body. Sometimes, the tree itself will have disappeared, but its uniqueness is preserved in digital form. The title of each sculpture gives its exact original geographical location, in this case Forest Row, which appears to be midway between Crawley and Royal Tunbridge Wells.

The city of Istanbul is especially rich in Judas trees (known there as erguvan), and their blossoming heralds the beginning of spring. The purple-pink colour of the buds is reminiscent of the royal purple of the Byzantine emperors, and during Ottoman times the buds were gathered for food and the wood turned into walking sticks. Today, the trees are becoming a major tourist attraction, much like the cherry blossom in Tokyo.

And now, a poem. There is a lot of poetry about the tree’s association with Judas, but I wanted to commemorate the tree’s origins in the Middle East, where it is best loved and understood. This work is by the much-loved Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou, and was written to commemorate his friend Vartan, an Armenian Iranian who was arrested by the Iranian secret police (SAVAK) because of his affiliation to the illegal Communist party. He was tortured in order to get him to reveal the names of his comrades, and the location of a printing press, but remained silent, and died as a result of his injuries. Shamlou had to replace the name ‘Vartan’ with ‘Nazli’ because of censorship concerns until after the Iranian revolution of 1979. As with much poetry written under authoritarian regimes, there is a lot of symbolism here, especially with regard to the coming of spring and the end of winter, but I think it also works on its own merit. See what you think.

Vartan by Ahmad Shamlou

Under the window in our house, the old lilac has blossomed.
Dispel all your doubts!
Don’t wrestle with the ominous Death!
Being is better than not being, especially in spring …”
Vartan didn’t say a word:
Gloriously
He suppressed his anger and then went away …
– “Vartan, say something!
The bird of silence
is waiting for the offspring of a horrible death
to hatch its egg!”
Vartan didn’t say a word:
Just as the sun,
he rose in the dark,
set in the twilight of blood,
and then went away …
Vartan didn’t say a word.
Vartan was a glowing star,
momentarily glistened in the dark,
and then vanished for good and all.
Vartan didn’t say a word.
Vartan was a violet:
He came into blossom
and gave us the good news,
“Winter has fallen apart.”
and then went away.
– “Vartan, spring has arrived and the Judas tree is in flower”.

Photo Credit

Photo One by By Rangermike at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7957214

Photo Two by Bouba at French Wikipedia – photo by Bouba, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1658073

Photo Three by By Kurt Stüber [1] – caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/mavica/index.html part of http://www.biolib.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8033

Photo Four by Sballal [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Photo Five by Omi4DSculpture: Michael Winstone – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47448719

Photo Six from https://www.theguideistanbul.com/judas-trees/

Photo Seven by Schezar from New York City, USA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

 

Dear Readers, I was sitting on the patio after eating a Waitrose Lemon Curd yoghurt (and if there’s a more middle-class statement than that I’d like to hear it) when I noticed that three Greenbottles were attracted to the empty yoghurt pot. And being the curious person that I am, I wondered why they came when no other insects did.

Well, first up Greenbottles have very superior taste (joke!) but actually they are attracted to the colour yellow, and also to the scent of many flowers. Notoriously, they love the smell of flowers like the Dead Horse Arum Lily, which stinks of carrion, and this makes sense, as Greenbottles are blowflies – they lay their eggs in carrion, and their larvae devour the corpses. However, when the adults can’t find carrion, they eat pollen, which is also very high in protein – females in particular are drawn to flowers, especially pregnant ones, who need the protein for their eggs to develop.

I’d noticed this attraction to flowers on many occasions – Greenbottles are often the first insects to arrive on newly open blooms, especially ones like wild carrot or cow parsley, with lots of tiny flowers. These flies are not specialist feeders like bees, but they are important pollinators of lots of plants, transferring pollen from one plant to another as they search for something to eat.

The love life of a Greenbottle is a complicated thing. First, the male pushes a potential mate several times with his head, and then taps her with his front legs. If all is going well, the male will mount the female whilst continuing to tap her with one front leg. If she’s amenable, the mating will take place, and the result is possibly 200 tiny maggots laid in a dead rabbit or some other corpse. However, if she’s not happy she will kick the male away with her back legs. Apparently, male Greenbottles have ‘handedness’, with some preferring to tap with their left foreleg, and others being ‘right-handed’.

How do the males recognise the females in the first place, though? Scientists have found that Greenbottle males can recognise a healthy female by the rate at which their iridescent green bodies ‘flash’ through their wingbeats – 178 Hz in case you wondered. This is actually slower than  the rate of other males, and is also slower than the rate for older flies of either sex. Furthermore, Greenbottles mate less on cloudy days, which seems to indicate that they are reliant on the flashes to identify a mate.

I am utterly gobsmacked, and not for the first time. The smallest, most maligned and commonest plants and animals that surround us often have the most complicated and nuanced of lives.

Let’s return briefly to the laying of eggs and the development of larvae, though. Anyone who has ever had a maggot-filled dustbin can attest to the speed and sheer numbers of blowfly larvae that can manifest themselves when conditions are right. But how? First up, when a suitable carcass is found, many females will lay their eggs on it – scientists aren’t sure quite what signal is given, but it may be that the sight of a female ovipositing encourages other females to do the same, or there may be some kind of chemical signal. But whatever the reason, this means that all the larvae are about the same age, and will all hatch together. This mass hatching means that the larvae thermoregulate, controlling and raising the temperature of the whole group, which means that they all develop more quickly. Furthermore, each larva secretes digestive enzymes which make the carrion easier to digest, benefitting the group as a whole. The group also appears to be able to make collective decisions – they will congregate in one area if there is lots to eat, but will split into smaller groups as the food runs out. It appears that each larva secretes a chemical signal, which encourages other larvae to follow.

To us, this might all seem a bit disgusting, but it’s worth bearing in mind that without flies getting rid of dead matter, we would be in trouble. And, finally, Greenbottles are one of the first insects to colonise dead matter, and as such are extremely important to forensic entomologists, who can calculate time of death from the degree of infestation by Greenbottle larvae. Larval secretions have also been found to be effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including MRSA.

While Greenbottles are vectors of human disease (due to their habit of landing on contaminated or rotting food and then transmitting the bacteria elsewhere), they are so much more – detritivores, pollinators, ‘smoking guns’ in murder cases, and possible sources of medical treatment. I don’t begrudge them a few mouthfuls of Waitrose yoghurt one bit.

Dear Readers, as a member of the RHS I can get free gardening advice, and so I sent off photos of my lacy whitebeam leaves. Within 48 hours I had an answer, to species level (which surprised me) – my leaves are being nibbled by a sawfly, Cladius brullei to be exact. Also known as the Blackberry Sawfly, this little creature also loves the leaves of raspberries and hawthorn. In an average year there can be two generations, but during a hot year like this year there can be more. No wonder my tree looks a little sorry for itself.

What the hell is a sawfly, though? Well, first things first, it isn’t a fly, but a member of the Hymenoptera, which includes wasps, bees and ants. Sawfly females have ‘saws’ on their abdomen, which they use to cut open plant tissues when laying eggs. As most of these insects are fairly small, most species are very under-recorded, hence my delight at getting an identification right to species level. But what does Cladius brullei look like?

Lepidopterans and sawflies have caterpillars, but sawfly caterpillars have at least five pairs of ‘abdominal prolegs’ (those squishy ‘feet’ on the middle of the body) whereas butterfly and moth caterpillars have only four. Plus, lepidopteran caterpillars often have multiple sets of eyes (if you look closely at their heads), whilst sawfly caterpillars have only two.

The RHS have assured me that the damage to the leaves won’t cause any lasting problems for the tree – after all, it was already stressed after last year’s drastic pruning, so a bit of ‘pest’ damage is only to be expected. I certainly wouldn’t consider spraying or anything else – there have been lots of insects around this year (relatively), and I’m sure the blue and great tits will be enjoying the caterpillars. A slightly moth-eaten (or in this case sawfly-eaten) garden is, to me, a sign that it’s alive.

 

 

Dear Readers, it’s very interesting to me how garden plants make their first tentative steps into the wild, but sometimes it’s less of a step, and more of an enthusiastic leap followed by a sprint. On our road, in East Finchley, my favourite front garden planted some Verbena bonariensis, and this year it’s advanced about 30 metres up the street in the general direction of my house. I’d already noticed this phenomenon on another one of the County Roads, but this is the first time I’ve really paid attention to the speed of spread. Plus,  I’m thinking that the prevailing wind must blow gently eastwards. I shall have to keep an eye on the plant’s advance, provided nobody tidies up too much, or the Barnet Weedkiller man doesn’t pay a visit.

And in the meantime, there has been a remarkable spread of this amaranth species. I wrote about it before here, and have come to the conclusion that it’s probably Reflexed Amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus) – in my previous piece, I noted that someone had suggested that amaranth seeds often come in with the sand used for building, and I speculated that maybe it had been introduced when our EV chargers were introduced. At any rate, it is advancing along the gutter and into the tree pits at a steady rate – it doesn’t seem as speedy as the verbena, but it’s determined nevertheless, and has clearly found a niche that few other plants are prepared to exploit.

So, yet again I am amazed at the resilience of plants, and of the variety to be found even in  a quiet back street in North London. Has anyone else noticed either of these plants becoming common in your area? Or what ‘weeds’ have really taken off? Do share!

Dear Readers, I have finally caved in and bought myself a trailcam – I have always been fascinated at the thought of what goes on in the garden after I’m asleep, and this feels like a great way to find out. However, clearly on 20th August the angle on the camera wasn’t right, as all I captured was the big human animal above on his way to the shed.

Last night, though, was much better.

I always throw out a handful of dry dog food for any passing foxes, and this one must have been waiting, because it’s literally a few minutes after I shut the back door. I love the way that foxy is scouring the patio to find every last bit. I was always a bit concerned that it was being gobbled up by one of the neighbourhood cats, but it seems not.

There’s an opportunistic moggie at 10.37 pm…

And then we have another visitor at 3.43 a.m. At least, I think it’s a different fox? What do you think? I think this second fox is a bit chunkier, with a bushier tail.

Then it seems to be all quiet until somebody’s cat comes to visit at 5.20 (and what a splendidly fluffy cat it is!)

And here’s one of our regular cat visitors, who always says hello if I’m sitting on the magic bench…

And here’s fluffy cat again….

And finally this energetic little hooligan…

So, I am very impressed with my new toy. What I am secretly hoping for (though not secretly anymore, clearly) is that at some point it will confirm that we have a hedgehog – I think I’ve seen the poo, but not regularly. So fingers crossed!

Dear Readers, our foster kittens Jaffa and McVitie have been with us for a few days now, and it’s fair to say that they’ve come out of their shell a fair bit. They are getting on for six months old, and so are in that gangly adolescent phase. Plus, kittens always wear an expression that reminds me of a dowager duchess seeing somebody naked in the garden.

At first I thought that Jaffa was the boldest one, but the other kit is now definitely building in confidence. They both rush to the door when they hear me coming – at the moment they’re confined to one room, but we’ll be gradually letting them have the run of the rest of the house from the weekend on, and then the fun will really start.

As a cat fosterer, you find yourself becoming obsessed with poo (those of you eating your breakfast might want to skip past this part) – one of the kits has an upset stomach, but the other one is fine. They’re both on ‘sensitive’ food, which is very expensive, so as soon as they sort their digestion out, we’ll be trying to wean them onto ‘normal’ food. Being a cat owner can be brutally expensive, what with vet fees and special food, and I see an increasing number of people deciding that they can’t afford to keep an animal. There are investigations into the corporate buy-up of many local vets practices, which ‘seems’ to have coincided with a doubling in the costs of some treatments. All the vets I know are caring people who want to do their best for the animals, but their corporate ‘masters’ are very keen on profit. Not an ideal situation, for sure.

Anyway, these two kittens are absolutely adorable. They get on well together, they’re eating well, they purr when you pick them up, and they’ll make somebody the most perfect pets. They’ve had me in stitches with their antics already :-).

Well, Readers, it might not be the end of summer quite yet, but it’s difficult to ignore the ‘back-to-school’ signs in the shops, the lengthening days, the goldening of the leaves. I absolutely love this poem/poems….see what you think. Read slowly, and let the pictures form in your head…

Three Songs at the End of Summer

By Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket …
In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.

Dear Readers, one of the joys of this blog has been the amazing people that I’ve met, not just in East Finchley, but all over the world. On Monday I went on an expedition to Chelsea Physic Garden with my friend JD – I haven’t been there for probably thirty years. What a wonderful place it is! And, in full glory at the moment, is the Golden Rain tree.

What you can’t see until you get close up is that the ‘fruits’ of the tree are tiny bladders or lanterns, making this a very unusual tree. It is becoming increasingly popular as a street tree, as not only does it have these ‘pods’, but it has yellow flowers in spring, impressive early foliage, and the pods darken to shades of deep orange in the autumn. Plus, it’s a relatively small tree, so could fit in any large-ish garden (though I suspect that the pollinators would prefer it if you planted a crab apple or cherry. Or even a hawthorn)

You might think, from looking at the tree, that it’s a member of the bean family, but no! It belongs to the ‘soap-berry’ family, the Sapindaceae, which includes trees such as the horse chestnut, the maples, and the lychee tree. Why soap-berry, though? One thought is that it relates to the milky sap of some of the plants in this family, but I remain a little sceptical.

The tree comes originally from China, Mongolia and South Korea, which makes one of its other names, ‘Pride of India’, a little confusing. Still, it is a tree that’s travelled widely – it arrived in Japan as long ago as 1200, and can be found all over Europe and North America. In his book ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood describes how the tree can tolerate pollution, exposure, hard surfaces and most things that a city can throw at it – anything, in fact, except shade.

Sitting under a Golden Rain Tree is supposed to make you fall in love with whoever you’re sitting with, allegedly – a 1957 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and DeForest Kelley (yes, that DeForest Kelley – ‘I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer, Jim’) was a tale of a Professor in Civil War Indiana falling in lurve inconveniently, mediated by the tree.

In Japan, the tree is associated with scholars, and is often grown close to their tombs. As the tree was mainly used medicinally to treat eye complaints, you can see how somebody studying texts for hours at a time, often in failing light, would have appreciated the plant, and how the connection with those who study might have grown.

Is this tree edible? Well, apparently the young shoots can be boiled and eaten like spinach, but the seeds are acidic, and the plant contains cyanide, so you might want to give it a miss. On the other hand, the flowers produce a yellow dye, and the mature leaves produce a black dye, so that might be a fun thing to try if you’ve some cloth or wool that you’re fed up with.

And here’s a poem, by Sylvia Plath no less. I found it sensual, but confusing. And my botanist self frequently had to pause and scratch her head. See what you think.

The Beekeeper’s Daughter by Sylvia Plath

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,

My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.

Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To father dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest —

A fruit that’s death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.

In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees
Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down
I set my eyes to a hole-mouth and meet an eye
Round, green, disconsolate as a tear.
Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg
Under the coronal of sugar roses

The queen bee marries the winter of your year.

Dear Readers, this post could also be called ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. On Saturday, I noticed that my neighbour’s green wheelie bin was in the middle of the pavement, and I knew that they would be away until mid-week, so I decided to put it away in their front garden. As I dragged it back, I brushed against my buddleia. Suddenly there was not only a sharp pain on the back of my neck, but a very distinct sound of angry buzzing coming from inside my shirt.

Well, this was not a happy situation, but fortunately my shirt was of the oversized variety (much more comfortable in this hot weather) and so, by a process of wriggling and dangling upside down I managed to liberate the angry insect before further harm was done, and lo and behold, a very cross bumblebee fell onto the pavement.

Now, I have only once been stung before, and that was when I accidentally stepped on a bee while wafting barefoot across a lawn as a teenager. And that was excruciatingly painful, whereas this was merely disconcerting. Which got me to thinking about the way that bumblebees sting.

I had always believed that bumblebee stingers were barbed, so if they stung someone  they would die. But actually, it’s honeybees which have a barbed sting – bumblebees can sting multiple times if necessary, so I’m very glad that ‘my’ bee decided to only sting once, probably out of the shock of suddenly being in an enclosed space. I also had such a mild reaction that it now seems clear that I didn’t inherit my mother’s extreme allergy to insect venom – a wasp sting on her neck caused very alarming swelling and pain, and Mum was told that another sting might be enough to kill her. However, I do note that it’s been discovered that different species of bees and wasps can have very different venom, so maybe I shouldn’t be too complacent.

Below is a photo of the bee sting 24 hours after it happened – and before any of you lovely people ask,  I have had the mole checked out and it’s fine.

Venom has evolved lots of times in different members of the animal kingdom, but is largely used for two reasons: for predation (i.e, a snake subduing its prey) or defence (i.e. a bumblebee stinging me on the neck). Defensive venom is usually a much simpler chemical, which causes immediate pain, as opposed to predatory venom which may act instead as a neurotoxin, paralysing an animal so that it can be eaten. Furthermore, one very interesting study has found that venom can even change within a single species, according to how likely the animal is to be predated, and how harsh the environment is. Venom is usually ‘expensive’ for the animal to produce, and so if the animal is less likely to be attacked, we would expect the composition of the venom to change to a ‘cheaper’ variety. This was observed in a study of bumblebees in the Swiss Alps, where the composition of the venom changed as the altitude increased – there are less predators at high altitude, and also life is harder, so the bumblebee uses its metabolic resources for other things, such as keeping warm and being able to fly. It still has venom, but less of it, and the chemical make up of the venom is different.

You can read this fascinating study here.

So, all in all being stung on the neck was an interesting experience, and one that’s raised all sorts of questions for me about the complexity of the natural world, and how varied things are. What a teacher a bee sting can be!

 

Dear Readers, in a couple of months I will be sneaking off for a very special holiday to somewhere that I’ve always dreamed of visiting. I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks, and it’s very doubtful that I’ll have either the time or energy (or indeed wi-fi) to post every day to the blog while I’m gone.

So, I had an idea.

I know that many of you have blogs of one kind or another, so I’m inviting anyone who would like to to submit something to be posted as a guest blog on Bug Woman. You won’t need to write anything new (unless you’d like to), but it would be a way of engaging with a different audience from your usual one, and it might be fun! I would do all the practical stuff around transferring your work and of course you’d receive full credit.

I would only ask that your piece has some connection, however vague, with the natural world.

If you don’t have a blog but would like to submit some writing/photos, that would be good too!

Leave me a note in the comments, and I’ll get in touch with you to discuss.