I’m in the middle of a course on plant identification. We’re looking at everything from grasses through to trees and figuring out how to tell one species from another. Biologists don’t know how many species of living organisms there are. The best estimate they have is 8.7 million, but estimates go from 3 million to […]

The place we live bears scars. A trail was hacked through the forest, a building was demolished, our house was built over 18 noisy months. Although it was a place of nature, that nature was damaged. So it became our job to nurture it back to health, to be stewards of the land. We planted […]

A few years ago I was on a beach in Florida. All was right with the world: the sun was shining, the waves were waving and the seagulls were staying away. I took a handful of sand and examined it. For the first time, I noticed what sand actually was. Instead of a monochrome grit, […]

A couple of years ago, I started to need reading glasses. First it was medicine bottles, then books, then my computer. If you’re of a certain age, you know how it goes. So off I went and bought a drugstore pair. They were wonderful. How clear the world was when I had them on! The […]

During the early days of Covid, when we were stuck at home and spring was slowly poking through, we’d go on a walk every afternoon. We started when the ground was covered in snow, but as the days went on, the ice gave way to the first green ferns that curled towards the precious sun. […]

My childhood bedroom was home to my museum of nature. There were two parts to this museum: the original collection, which was in a small piece of furniture with shelves and tiny drawers, perhaps a former home to sewing materials; the second part was the new, modernist addition – made by my father, painted white, […]

My drive to the office is usually on autopilot. So familiar is the route, I arrive at the parking lot without thinking about it. One day a few years ago, all that changed. I noticed the leaves of the aspen that lined the road were quivering. It was if each branch and each leaf was […]

One day I found a packet of wildflower seeds. Don’t know where they came from, don’t know why I had them. But when you find a packet of seeds, what do you do? You sow them, of course. So I did, on a lump of ground piled up by the folks who built our house. […]

Every winter for the past few years I’ve spent countless hours watching the squirrels. There were five hanging out beneath the bird feeders the other day. They practise a tense Cold War, facing each other 18 inches apart. Sometimes one would get a little too close – much squeaking would ensure. Occasionally an incursion would […]

One of my favourite places is the Albaicín in Granada, Spain. This neighbourhood of narrow streets between whitewashed houses has survived pretty much intact in the centuries since it was built by the area’s Muslim inhabitants. It’s on a hill opposite the Alhambra, the glorious palace complex that glows red against snow-topped mountains. The best […]