Dear Readers, the denizens of East Finchley have become very adventurous with their tree pits just lately. At first glance, the one above seems to be mainly home to some Mexican Fleabane, but a closer look shows us some tomatoes and some very fine courgettes, with the flowers looking just ready to open.

I must admit that with all the dogs about I might be a little nervous about eating them, but I am still very impressed that someone is managing to grow not only plants but actual food in an area less than a metre square.

Just up the road is another tree pit, this time showing some opium poppies on one side….

…and what I’m fairly convinced is some redshank on the other (this is a form of bistort or Persicaria – it’s in the same family as Japanese knotweed, but is a very inoffensive little plant with none of the bad manners of its relative)

Another tree pit has been lovingly planted up with some begonias – not great for pollinators but very pretty nonetheless.

And sometimes things just plant themselves. In this tree pit we have some great willowherb on one side, and one of the smaller willowherbs (probably square-stalked willowherb) on the other.

Great willowherb

Square-stalked willowherb (probably)

But then I have to stop and admire this fantastic stand of lavender, still going strong a good month after mine (on the south-facing side of the street) has gone over. There are a dozen bumblebees on it, and many of them are queens. The one below looks most likely to be buff-tailed bumblebee queen, even though her ‘tail’ looks pretty white – the colour is a bit richer than I’d expect on a white-tailed bumblebee queen, but there is a lot of variability within both species.

No doubt about this one though: this is a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) queen. She was much larger than I’d have expected the very similar red-shanked carder bee (Bombus ruderarius) to be. It’s lovely to see so many harbingers of next year’s bumblebee colonies already on the wing – although it’s only August many of this year’s colonies have already broken up, and the new queens are feeding up to put on weight for their hibernation.

And finally, as I was about to walk back through the front door I was interrupted by an enormous emperor dragonfly, easily the size of my finger. I didn’t manage to capture it on camera, as it was zooming about, possibly trying to hunt the butterflies and bees on my buddleia. I have been visited by one before, though, and you can read all about it here. To see a creature like this really is an event worth celebrating.

Female Emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator)

Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus)

Dear Readers, here I am, back in East Finchley after a visit to University College Hospital to check out my thyroid again. Regular readers will remember that I’ve been for a raft of tests on various things that were kicked off back in March when I was referred for a CT scan following a persistent cough. It found all kinds of things, including a congenital heart defect, but I have been waiting for a second ultrasound and possible biopsy on my poor old thyroid gland, which apparently has many nodules. Who knew that you could even get nodules in your thyroid? This health stuff is an education for sure.

There is nothing more humbling than waiting for tests in an NHS hospital. I was seated next to an elderly lady who had been referred for an emergency biopsy today. She was with her daughter, who had an appointment elsewhere in the hospital coming up, and was therefore very anxious about the timing of the procedure, as she wanted to be there with her Mum. The older lady was very relaxed about the whole thing, though, as people often are when they’ve spent a lot of time in the medical system and have pretty much seen it all. She was doing a word search puzzle, while her daughter was getting more and more anxious.

Just up the way were three generations of a family – a toddler, a young mother, and her mother. It was the young mother who was going in for an ultrasound scan. There was a brief flurry of excitement when her first name was called, but it turned out there there was more than one person with the same name, so we all settled down again. There were not quite enough seats so we were all swapping around and I was checking how long I could squat for (answer, not as long as I used to be able to). The baby was charming everyone who looked at him, beaming and grinning as if each new person was the most wonderful thing that he’d ever seen. Then the young mother was finally called, so gran looked after the baby. When the young mum came out, she was crying. As they walked to the lift, all I could here was the anxiety in gran’s voice as she tried to find out what had happened. Then the lift doors shut, and that little family and that story were gone, and none of us will ever know the end of it.

We all looked at one another, and then I was called. The doctor performing the ultrasound was brisk but efficient, and with the waiting room full of anxious people I could see that he wanted to get through as quickly as possible.

Five minutes later he pronounced my nodules benign, a biopsy not necessary, and no need for any further investigations. As I was wiping ultrasound lubricant off my neck, I ventured that it must be good to be able to give a bit of good news.

” We are the centre of human misery here”, he said. I wondered if he was thinking about the young woman who’d been in before me. What a toll it must take, being the bearer of bad news over and over again.

As I walked back, I gave the thumbs up to the elderly lady and her daughter as they stood up to go through for the biopsy.

“Good luck”, I said, and the elderly lady gave me a thumbs up back. It’s extraordinary to me how quickly camaraderie grows in these waiting rooms and queues and wards. We seem to become humbler,gentler, kinder versions of ourselves when we’re exposed to our own mortality and that of others. And after all, today I was lucky, and I am grateful to be able to wander into the garden and admire the butterflies, but  each of us is only a diagnosis away from something that changes our lives utterly. How precious it makes this sunny summer evening as the soft light makes the red brick of the houses opposite glow, and the bees browse drowsily on the buddleia below my office window.

Dear Readers, you might remember that I was celebrating the release of the James Cropper Wainwright Prize longlist a few weeks ago (and lamenting that the shortlist follows on so quickly (on 10th August). Well, I have made a start, and have really enjoyed the two books that I have managed to get under my belt so far. When the shortlist is published I will probably try to get through that, and then return to the rest of the longlist. In the past, some of my favourites haven’t made the final six, so there will be no hardship in that!

First up was ‘A Line in the World – A Year on the North Sea Coast’ by Dorthe Nors, translated by Caroline Waight. I can’t remember a translated book ever being shortlisted before, and I am a great fan of the Pushkin Press, who publish a lot of works in translation. This book introduced me to a part of the world that I don’t know at all – the rugged western coast of Denmark and Germany, down into the Netherlands. This is where Nors grew up, and there is such a strong sense of place. Here Dors discusses the beach at Vedersø dune:

” It was there, one day when I was eleven, that I was nearly dragged out to sea by a wave. I was holding my mother’s hand: it was August. In those days I wasn’t familiar with the currents, and I didn’t appreciate their strength. But as we walked along the beach, letting the waves splash around our ankles, one of them dragged me out. My mother grabbed my leg and we both skidded on the shingle until it let us go. Afterwards we sat and cried a bit. Grazes on our legs, blood. My mother was clutching my hand and wouldn’t let it go. Since then I’ve called them Valkyrie waves, the kind that rove in from the North Sea in long elegant swells on otherwise mild days. They’ll take you to sea if they can. I’m afraid of them, and everytime I see them I remember love”.

She also gives a strong sense of what it’s like living in one of the small farming and fishing communities that pepper the coastline. After a wolf wanders into the area from Germany, the local people are terrified of it, and when Nors is interviewed on Danish radio and says that you’re more likely to be mown down by a tractor than eaten by a wolf, she becomes persona non grata overnight:

“And then I disappeared. So did the man who was painting my woodshed. The woman at the end of the sunken lane didn’t give me any biscuits for Christmas. People stopped saying hello when they passed in their cars. I asked a nice old lady nearby how long I would be invisible before my sentence was served. I said it as a joke, but she answered, ‘A year and a half.’

She is a very close observer of nature. I loved this:

“Some birds use their sense of smell to navigate and I have seen the waders’ long bills, the way they bend, double over, and operate in sandy beds like sewing needles.”

I can give this book no higher praise than to say that it not only made me think, about memory and place and how the two are intertwined, but it made me ache to go to those grey, windswept shores, to gaze out to sea and see what happened (hopefully without being grabbed by Valkyrie waves).

And then, howabout ‘The Swimmer – The Wild Life of Roger Deakin’ by Patrick Barkham? Certainly if you think all there is to Roger Deakin was ‘Waterlog’ and ‘Wildwood’, you’re in for a surprise, as I was. Deakin was an endlessly energetic man, full of ideas and schemes and plans. He worked for several advertising campaigns, and came up with the slogan ‘Come home to a real fire’. He was an eccentric but much-loved teacher of English in Diss in Norfolk, where his corduroy trousers and Byronesque curls were the talk of the school. He completely renovated Walnut Tree Farm, and he fought a long and ferocious battle to save the hedgerow at the back of his property. He was heavily involved in the ‘Save the Whale’ campaigns, made a number of documentaries, fell in and out of love repeatedly, and packed more into his short life than most of us will if we live to be a hundred (Deakin died of a brain tumour aged 63).

The biography is largely written in Deakin’s own words, and the words of his friends and family – Barkham has worked very hard to let Deakin and the people who knew him tell their story. This results in some very interesting juxtapositions, especially with regard to Deakin’s love life – sometimes he and his lovers have extremely different opinions about what was going on. Deakin sounds like a man who could be difficult: selfish, single-minded and determined to get his own way. And yet, what comes across most is a sense of how much he was loved, and there could be no greater tribute. I found Barkham’s account completely compelling, and although I knew how it would end I confess to still being greatly moved at the last chapter, telling of Deakin’s death and memorial.

Two very different books, but both highly recommended.

Next up: ‘The Flow – Rivers, Water and Wildness’ by Amy-Jane Beer, followed by ‘Why Women Grow’ by Alice Vincent. One on rivers, one on gardens – let’s see how we get on!

Alpine Chough in Switzerland – PhotoBy Jim Higham from UK – Alpine Chough, Schilthorn, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11377415

Dear Readers, anyone who has ever seen a flock of Alpine choughs ( Pyrrhocorax graculus) in the mountains of Austria or Switzerland will know what social, excitable, energetic birds they are. I’ve loved watching them playing in the wind (and ‘playing’ is the only possible word, as they tumble and dive, seemingly for the sheer hell of it). You can get the idea from the recording below by Stanislas Wroza, taped in the French Alps.

And how about this thoroughly dizzying short film of them flying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOC-_z2Hppg

Choughs are members of the crow family, with all the intelligence that that usually indicates, but there are only two species in the genus. While we are not quite mountainous enough for Alpine choughs, we do have a few small populations of the Red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) – there are some on the Isle of Man, some in North Wales and some in Cornwall, plus some on the west coast of Scotland, largely living in the rockiest possible places. In total there are probably about 400 breeding pairs, making them the rarest UK crows. Some populations, like the Cornish choughs, are probably now becoming genetically inviable, with not enough variation to support the birds going forward.

Red-billed Chough (Photo By Ken Billington – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12342398)

Enter the Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Project, where the aim is to reintroduce Red-billed Choughs to the south of England, where the habitat is suitable but the birds haven’t been seen for over 200 years. Young birds from other parts of the chough’s range have been creche-reared, a special type of rearing which involves feeding the birds as a group so that they get to rely on one other rather than imprinting on the humans. The aim is to release up to 50 birds over the next five years, with the hope of establishing a breeding population which will eventually move west and bring some genetic diversity to the Cornish group. It would be wonderful to see these birds performing their acrobatics over more of the country, and it always gives me hope that people are prepared to spend so much time and effort to try to improve our nature-deprived land. Good luck to the choughs! You can read about them here and to learn more about the science, and about how the scientists are hoping to keep an eye on the choughs once they’re free, have a look at the film here.

Scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli

Dear Readers, I might have mentioned that I was pining for some science, so I’ve signed up for the Open University Summer Science School. My first investigation is, very topically, into water quality, and possible faecal contamination of some imaginary water sources.

Humans and many animals normally live happily with Escherichia coli in their intestines, where it causes no problems at all. However, there are some forms of E.coli which cause disease, and amongst the worst are the enterohaemorrhagic bacteria, which include a nasty bug called E.coli 0157. Not only does this cause the usual bloody diarrhoea and cramps but, in the worst cases, it can damage the blood vessels in the kidneys, leading to kidney failure and even death. My mission on this occasion is to look at water samples from three different areas – two wells and a bathing area – from an imaginary town where people are showing symptoms of E.coli-induced diarrhoea, and first of all to see if there’s been a deterioration in water quality using a technique called the Aerobic Colony Count (ACC).

Lots of different kinds of organisms can live in water, but most of them are rendered harmless in the Global North by chlorination or UV light treatment of the water we drink (clearly not the water that we might swim or paddle in however, as recent sewage releases into rivers and the sea have shown). However, not everyone is so lucky, and so the water that they drink can contain all sorts of organisms. Some of them, known as environmental organisms, live naturally in water, and so while no one wants to drink microorganisms they are usually harmless (and often can’t survive at the temperatures in the human body). Others, such as E.coli 0157, are pathogens, which can survive in the water but really take off when they reach the perfect environment of the human gut.

The Aerobic Colony Count takes a sample of water, and incubates it at two different temperatures – 22 degrees Centigrade and 37 degrees Centigrade. At 22 degrees, any environmental organisms are likely to multiply, at 37 degrees we should see an increase in pathogens if any are present. An increase in environmental organisms indicates a general decrease in water quality, but an increase in pathogens indicates potential faecal contamination.

So, all of this sciencing takes place in an online laboratory (so there’s no danger of me contaminating half of East Finchley with an accidental sample spillage) but all the same I am channelling  my inner Public Health professional and am thoroughly enjoying all this messing about with (virtual) test tubes and petri dishes. Once I’ve taken samples from the wells and the bathing area, it will be interesting to see if there’s a clear indication of where the contamination is coming from. Once we know, I can use some other techniques to try to identify which organisms are involved, and in particular if the dreaded E.coli 0157 is implicated.

Now, where’s me white coat?

St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Dear Readers, I haven’t been to St Pancras and Islington Cemetery for months – we went every Saturday during the two years of lockdown, but since then the pace of life has picked up and we seem to be doing so much ‘stuff’ that the simpler pleasures have been squeezed out. But today we returned, and nature has been just doing her ‘stuff’ the whole time.

The dandelions have gone, but the catsears and nipplewort are still in full flower.

I love the way that the leaves of the nipplewort are going purple from the tip, as if gently dipped in ink.

I love this very characterful small tree – I suspect that it’s dead, but with the sun behind it it looked rather like a cartoon character with a particularly hairy wig.

In the woodland graveyard area the ragwort is still in full flower too – I went looking for cinnabar moth caterpillars but couldn’t find any. Still, this plant is extremely popular with all sorts of pollinators. In the countryside it’s reviled for poisoning horses and cattle, but this is really only a problem if it gets mixed up with other hay plants. No chance of poisoning any livestock here.

And the rosebay willowherb is coming into flower – always worth a look in case there are any hawk moth caterpillars. In fact, it’s always worth a look anyway.

I said hello to the swamp cypress, my favourite tree. Soon she’ll be turning the colour of rust before she sheds her leaves (an unusual case of a conifer that’s deciduous).

I stopped to admire the flowers on the burr, another popular plant with pollinators (there’s a common carder bumblebee on this one).

And then we had a walk around the new area close to the rear of the cemetery, where a meadow has been cut and re-turfed, and a tarmac path popped in. Just look at the cracks that are appearing already! Nature will have its way, for sure. It’s just a shame that the central area of this path is so bland compared to what was there before. I imagine that some new graves will be going in soon.

But there’s still a wild area at the back of the site, where some teasel is attracting the bumblebees.

I have a friend who has lovingly grown 200 teasel seedlings. She wasn’t impressed when I told her that my crop of teasels has grown from a single teasel that I planted two years ago. Once you have one of these pollinator-friendly plants, you’ll have them forever :-). The only good thing is that the seedlings are relatively easy to identify and remove if surplus to requirements.

An abundance of teasel in the back garden

At the back end of the cemetery path, the brambles are extending their eager fingers across the tarmac. I noticed that in some places the blackberries are already ripe, which is good news for foragers of all species.

And look at the thistledown – it always astonishes me how much can be packed into a single seedhead. No wonder creeping thistle is such a successful plant.

And it’s been a good year for the ash trees too, which is good to see in the light of ash dieback. How many of these ‘keys’ will make it to adulthood is anyone’s guess.

Late July/August is a time for a pause: the birds are moulting, many plants have already flowered, and the heavy labour of spring and early summer is done. It’s time for many creatures to have a rest, and I know how they feel – at work so many people are on holiday and there’s a sense of pause and taking stock. Let’s enjoy this time if we’re able to, before the world turns again towards the work of autumn, with its new academic term and general increase in pace. And let’s take pleasure in the small things. There are plenty around if we give ourselves time to look.

Common toadflax

Dear Readers, how did we end up in August already? This can feel like the tipping point of the year – some plants are still in flower, while berries are already appearing on many more. The birds will mostly have done their breeding for the year, and the garden may seem strangely silent. There should still be lots of insects about though, and maybe even the first orb spider webs – the spiders have been in the garden for ages, but this is the first time that they’ve grown big enough to be noticed. Let’s see what else is in store for us….

Things to Do

• As we get into the second half of 2023, a lot of organisations haven’t yet posted any events. However, I did discover that the Royal Parks have a selection of self-guided walks for you to download – some, such as ‘Music for Trees’ (which has pieces of music to be listened to under particular trees) have an app to download, while others, such as the ‘More Than Bugs’ trail and the St James’s Park Tree Walk have maps for you to follow. Just the thing if it isn’t too hot.
• The London Natural History Society has a number of very interesting walks in August and you can see the whole programme here. Two particularly caught my eye – the first, ‘Looking at trees around St Paul’s Cathedral‘ could not be more central, and I know from my street tree walk in the area that there are a lot of very interesting specimen trees to be examined. The walk takes place on Saturday 12th August from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The second LNHS walk is at Richmond Park, on 5th August and will be looking at the ecology and entomology of this very interesting area.
• On 10th August at 7.00 pm there’s an online talk by Nathalie Mahieu on ‘Fab Peregrines‘ – although all peregrines are definitely fab, this is particularly about the peregrines that breed on Charing Cross Hospital, otherwise known as the Fulham and Barnes (FaB) peregrines. I’m fascinated by how these birds are adapting to city life, and it will be good to hear what Nathalie has to say.

Plants for Pollinators

The RHS guide to Plants for Bees (in January’s RHS magazine) suggests Field Scabious as the ideal plant for the month – it provides food for two specialised species (the small scabious mining bee (Andrena marginata) and the large scabious mining bee (Andrena hattorfiana), plus many other species, including the beautiful red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarious) and a whole host of hoverflies and beetles.

Field scabious (Knautia arvensis)

Large scabious mining bee (Andrena hattorfiana) (Photo By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14540871)

Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) Photo Image credit: Tom Ings

Other suggested plants include greater knapweed, globe thistle, catmint (though not if you have feline visitors to the garden as it will most likely get squashed), fuchsia (so good for hawkmoths of various kinds) and my favourite, wild carrot.

Bird Behaviour

• As I’ve noted before, August can be a very quiet time in the garden – many adult birds are moulting and so are keeping a low profile, and there is starting to be plenty of food in parks and woodland and hedgerows, from acorns and beech mast to berries and rosehips. This is the start of the big autumn feed-up, both for birds who stay in the UK and need to endure the lean months, and for those who are planning to migrate.
• Juvenile birds may well be forming mixed flocks – tits and finches in particular do this, and it can be fun to see if there’s anyone unusual in amongst the ‘usual suspects’. You might get a brief glimpse of an unexpected young nuthatch or even a lesser spotted woodpecker that has been ‘caught up’ in a flock. There’s strength in numbers, and more eyes means more chances to spot food and avoid predators, plus the pressure to form territories and find partners is off until the spring.
• The swifts, the last to arrive in the UK in May, are also the first to leave, and you will be lucky to spot any after the end of this month.
• You might find that your local house sparrows have disappeared, too – they often ‘take a holiday’ in August, if there are seeding plants around. They won’t usually go more than a mile, and will be back by September, homebodies that they usually are.
• And this is the prime month to see goldfinches feeding on thistles and teasel. The males have slightly longer beaks, and so are more able to cope with the long spines that protect the teasel seeds, leaving the females to eat the thistles.

Juvenile goldfinch on a seedhead at the Olympic Park, Stratford

Plants in Flower

Judging by my posts from previous years, Japanese anemones are putting in an appearance now, along with agapanthus, the small hardy geraniums (such as hedge cranesbill), common toadflax (as in the first photo), bristly oxtongue and nipplewort, and Japanese knotweed (ahem). Buddleia might still be in flower, and so will the more showy hydrangeas. Hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife are both resplendent alongside the pond.

What is really noticeable though is the amount of fruit – everything from elderberries, brambles and rosehips on the dog roses to conkers and acorns, through sea buckthorn and pyracantha. No wonder all the birds have gone AWOL. By the end of the month, most of the haws on my hawthorn tree will be gone.

Hawthorn berries

Other Things to Look/Listen Out For

• If you’re on a seaside holiday, spend some time watching the gulls and their antics. Many a café owner will be patrolling the seafront with a water pistol to try to deter some of the herring gulls. Good luck with that!
• Six of the nine species of British blue butterfly will be on the wing.

Holly blue butterfly sunning itself

• The larger bumblebees will be a bit less in evidence, but the common carders will be out and about for a few months yet. In my garden they are late to appear, but are also the last bumbles to be on the wing.

Common carder on Michaelmas daisies in October!

• Keep an eye open for the sycamore moth caterpillar, a very flamboyant creature. As the name suggests, you’ll find it on sycamore trees, maples and horse chestnuts.

• Juvenile green woodpeckers might be independent, but they might also be being ‘shown the ropes’ by their parents, as was the case with the one below. The adult was hammering into an ants’ nest when it was ‘seen off’ by a magpie. What outrageously cheeky opportunists they are.

Adult green woodpecker being ‘seen off’ by magpie

Juvenile green woodpecker

• Keep your eyes open for clouded yellow butterflies – these are migratory, and if conditions are right, you might see them in some numbers in high summer. The last big ‘Clouded Yellow Summer’ was in 2006, so we are well due for another one.

Clouded yellow (Colias croceus) Photo By Charles J. Sharp

• Generally a quiet month for foxes, but make the most of it – as autumn approaches it can sound like all hell has broken loose in the garden.
• There are two full moons this month. The first, on 1st August, is known as the Grain Moon or Lynx Moon. The second, on 31st August, is the Wine Moon or Song Moon. When two full moons appear in the same month, the second one is known as a Blue Moon.

Holidays and Celebrations

• 1st August – Lammas (Christian)/Lughnasa (Gaelic/Pagan) – first harvest festival
• 7th August – Summer Bank Holiday, Scotland and Ireland
• 20th August – Women’s World Cup Final in Sydney, Australia
• 26th to 28th August – Notting Hill Carnival
• 28th August – Summer Bank Holiday, England, Wales and Northern Ireland

St Francis and the Birds 1935 Sir Stanley Spencer 1891-1959 Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1967 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00961

Dear Readers, to continue with the St Francis of Assisi theme I wanted to share this painting, by Stanley Spencer, showing St Francis as a large, avuncular figure, surrounded by the chickens and ducks in the farmyard. It seems to me that it manages to combine the sacred and the profane rather well: Spencer said that St Francis was based on his father, who would go out in his dressing gown to feed the birds. The committee of the Royal Academy were not impressed back in the 1930s however, rejecting this painting along with several others. Spencer resigned his membership of the Royal Academy in protest.

The painting is based on the story of St Francis preaching to the birds: one account tells of how, when passing through a woodland with his companions, he asks them to excuse him while he goes to ‘preach to my sisters, the birds’. The birds are said to have listened attentively, with not one of them flying away.

St Francis and the birds, fresco by Giotto (1266-1337)

St Francis of Assisi was the first person to set up a living nativity, with an actual ox and ass, in 1223. The Sunday closest to St Francis’s  feast day, 4th October, is often used for a service to bless animals, and one of the largest ceremonies (with the most diverse selection of animals) is held at St John the Divine in Manhattan, but there will be smaller services in many countries. I imagine that it’s quite the occasion, and that keeping all those different animals from getting up to mischief would be quite a challenge. Has anyone ever been to one of these services, dear Readers? Do share.

An Alpaca being blessed at St John the Divine (Photo from https://ilovetheupperwestside.com/blessing-of-the-animals-at-st-john-the-divine/)

St Francis with the wolf of Gubbio (from Sasseta’s altarpiece, 1437 – 1444)

Dear Readers, it might not surprise you to hear that St Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226) is my favourite saint, both for his humility and service to the poor, and for his devotion to the natural world, and so it was a no-brainer to visit the exhibition about the many representations of his life at the St Francis of Assisi exhibition at the National Gallery (which finishes on Sunday 30th July so hurry if you want to see it!). The National Gallery itself is a bit of a building site at the moment, in advance of its 200th birthday next year, so it’s almost as if this exhibition, which is free, is an attempt to make up for all the inconvenience.

However, even before the exhibition one of my very favourite paintings in the whole gallery is the depiction of St Francis with the wolf of Gubbio from the Sasseta altarpiece. The whole altarpiece shows eight scenes from St Francis’s life, from him renouncing his father, a rich cloth merchant, when he commits himself to a life of poverty and founds the Franciscan order, to him walking through fire in order to impress the Sultan of Egypt who he met in 1218. It’s the wolf story that I keep coming back to, though, and anyone who has ever visited the National Gallery with me will have been dragged to look at this picture (probably en route to admiring Whistlejacket by Stubbs).

Have a look at the image above. The Wolf of Gubbio was a notorious killer and eater of people – on the right of the painting there are various bits of body, and there are bones strewn along the path. However, St Francis has taken the paw of the wolf in his hand, and is gesturing to the notary, sitting on a stool on the left, while the townspeople look solemnly on. The wolf has sworn not to eat anymore of the locals, and the notary has written it all down. In the sky, the flock of birds has changed direction abruptly, hopefully a good sign. It has a cartoonish appeal that must have made life easier for the mostly illiterate viewers of the altarpiece, and as always I adore the little details.

There is something about this that I find very touching – the idea of a pact between man and nature that has been so lost over the past centuries. St Francis was unusual in not taking that idea of ‘dominion’ literally – he seems to have seen the animals as both a source of divine inspiration, and of companions and partners in the world. What a healthy and respectful way to consider this extraordinary world that we live in!

St Francis composed a poem called The Canticle of the Sun. I’ve reproduced it in full below.

The Canticle of the Sun

Most High, all powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honour, and all blessing.

To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who will find Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.^[3]

The more observant (and older amongst us) might remember a song by Donovan called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which appeared in a film of the same name by Franco Zeffirelli about the life of St Francis. If you watch the video, be prepared to grit your teeth at the sight of a curly-haired youth gamboling like Fotherington-Thomas (of Moleworth fame) through a meadow, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. Well, this was practically the 1960s when such things were allowed.

I can’t leave the subject of the Wolf of Gubbio, though, without sharing this much later painting, by Luc-Olivier Merson (1877). In it, we see the now reformed wolf wearing a halo, and being fed by the local butcher – part of the deal that the wolf did with St Francis was that the wolf would receive food in exchange for not slaughtering anyone. I love the bustle of this scene, from the sceptical cat at the butcher’s feet to the rather sad dog in the bottom left hand corner, and the small child stroking the wolf and looking up at their mother for approval. Interestingly, Merson himself is best known for designing postage stamps, but for me, this must rank amongst his finest work. It seems to me to suggest that it is possible for human beings to live in harmony with nature. Let’s hope that Merson was right.

The Wolf of Gubbio (Luc-Olivier Merson, 1887)