At this time of year, it's common to see ladybirds gathering together on fences (or gravestones) to hibernate. Yesterday, I was surprised to find a group of hoverfly larvae gathered on a fence post where I would have expected to see ladybirds. (I'm not entirely sure that the green insect in the photo below is a hoverfly larva, but the rest of them certainly are)
Subtitled Timeless Lessons of Renewal, Tranquility and Joy, this is the latest book from Anthony D. Fredericks, professor emeritus of education at York College, in York, Pennsylvania where he taught general science and creative writing courses for 30 years.
The book is prefaced with the author's account of a particularly memorable childhood encounter with a mother deer and her fawn, which sparked his lifelong interest in forests. The remaining chapters share what he has learned over the years from his times in forests, starting from his childhood camping and fishing trips to the John Muir Wilderness in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. (I myself enjoyed an unforgettable trip to this area too, when I was a child!)
Each brief chapter shares something that the author has learned from time spent in forests, and from the lives of notable individual trees, and then gives us a practical tip for life, a journalling prompt and a snippet to think about. For example, the starting point of observing 'burls' (age related imperfections) on an ancient bald cypress tree, leads to a passage about accepting our own imperfections. The practical exercise in this chapter is to pay close attention to the differences between trees and the imperfections of individual trees; the journalling prompt is to think about your own imperfections more as unique aspects of yourself and the topic to think about is to consider the imperfections of the box elder, whose "Brittle limbs, twisted trunks susceptible to rot, and dull yellow leaves often put this species in the “ugly tree” category."
Interesting / inspiring quotes from various writers are scattered among the chapters, my favourite (given that I've done wildlife surveys of Edinburgh's cemeteries) being "Forests may be gorgeous, but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery." from Andrea Gibson.
I really enjoyed the way that Fredericks used observations from nature as a starting point both for investigating nature itself in greater detail but also thinking about ourselves more deeply and seeing ourselves as being more integrated with the nature we see around us. This dual approach gives this book a particular texture and richness, that gives it an appeal that I don't find in standard self help texts, though having said that, it does become a little repetitive at times in terms of the life lessons offered.
This book is designed to be read slowly, one brief chapter every week or something so that you can spend time thinking about the lessons the trees (and the author) are offering you.
The Healing Wisdom of the Forest by Anthony D. Fredericks, published (2025) by Health Communications, Inc.
Disclaimer: I was sent a free electronic copy of this book in return for an honest review
Yesterday we took a lovely walk along the Water of Leith from Roseburn to Stockbridge. Storm Amy was still in evidence in the high winds, but it stayed dry. We had a wonderful view of a Dipper (though didn't get a photo) and did capture this Grey Heron on camera.
It was UK Fungus Day yesterday, a chance to celebrate fungi, which are such a feature of our autumns!
This memoir follows the seasons over a year, on sixteen acres of wild land along the Conestoga River in Southern Ontario, Canada. The land has been in the author's family for many years and she writes about it with a keen observational eye and a great affection for the wildlife that lives there.
The author starts by taking the reader on a tour along the river, introducing us to the wildlife and humans that share this place and inviting us to slow down and appreciate the natural treasures that surround us. She obviously knows the land very well, she knows where the raccoons live, where the beavers build their dams, and where the blackbirds nest. She is attuned to seasonal change such that she can tell us things like: "A patch of toothy-leaved herb Robert, its tiny pinkish blooms already nearly done, spreads out in emerald-green beneath a rift in the canopy of young cedars. In a few short weeks, we’ll see the yellow-orange spurred slippers of spotted jewelweed in their place."
We're then treated to Beeartt's nature diary, starting on 1 March, when snow still lies heavy on the ground through the seasons. She details the weather and the wildlife she sees around her, and includes interesting facts such as: "Red squirrels can even suss out the difference between maple species, singling out those with the highest sugar concentrations." This is followed by an exploration of the history of human use of maple syrup, which I found fascinating (even though I don't like the taste of maple syrup).
This use of nature observations as a way into exploring the ecology, geology, history and cultures of the area, is a real strength of the book, giving the reader a deep sense of the place. She also uses nature as a way into thinking about the divine and the nature of religious belief and for looking at issues such as climate change, pollution and nature deficit disorder. For every month she shares information about the flower (for example, the common Daisy is the flower for April) and possibly more information than we need about the birthstone.
It's a beautifully detailed book that leaves the reader with the impression that Beeaff would be a great person to have as a walking companion.
Infinite Paradise by Dianne Ebertt Beeaff published (2025) by She Writes Press
Disclaimer: I was sent a free electronic copy of this book in return for an honest review.
The day before we went on holiday to Dumfries and Galloway we visited Barnton Bunker - Edinburgh's hidden Cold War Nuclear Bunker! It's currently being restored and transformed into an arts venue. You can read a little more about the bunker itself in today's post over on my Shapeshifting Green blog.
The bunker is surrounded by open space on Corstorphine Hill, with some pretty dramatic cliffs, great views across to the Firth of Forth
and some unexpected residents. The goats are very friendly - here are two we made friends with.
The bunker keeps emus to scare off potential thieves and vandals, but the emus are pretty friendly too, during our visit, we were given special emu food that we could feed directly to the emus. The emu standing in front of the emu shed in the photo below is called Joyce
Subtitled History as if Animals Mattered, this scholarly book examines the role that animals have played in history. It is a project of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, bringing together academic articles from The Journal of Animal Ethics on a range of topics relating to the concept of animal history; key intellectuals who have shaped our attitudes to animals; meat eating and vivisection.
Of course, any animal history that we have access to, will be written by humans, though some postulate that perhaps some animals have their own histories, which they share in ways we can't understand (elephants being the species that strikes me as surely having their own history.) However we look at it animals are vital to our history, from the animals hunted by our long ago ancestors, to the cats that kept rats away from ancient Egyptian grain to the rats that spread the plague. It's also interesting to note that Edinburgh has more statues to animals than to women.
Jacob Brandler opens the discussion with his article "Do “Animals” Have Histor(ies)? Can/Should Humans Know Them? A Heuristic Reframing of Animal-Human Relationships". This article links the current developing interest in animal history to the increasing interest in history of minority groups within human society and suggests that a greater understanding of the place of animals in history leads to a more ethical treatment of animals today.
Violette Pouillard discusses two books about celebrity animals in Animal Biographies: Beyond Archetypal Figures, highlighting how individual animals are treated in captivity and how this contrasts with the lives of free-living animals.
In the section on historical intellectuals and their attitudes to animals, Cheryl E Abbate goes first with “Higher” and “Lower” Political Animals: A critical Analysis of Aristotle’s Account of the Political Animal which explores Aristotle's consideration of 'the political animal' and extends it to non-human animals, while Christina Hoenig looks at Augustine of Hippo on Nonhuman Animals. Both these articles examine the legacy left by these ancient influential thinkers. In “Mad Madge”: The Contribution of Margaret Cavendish to Animal Ethics, Lauren Bestwick examines Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673). Labelled "Mad" by her contemporaries for her radical views, she was an aristocrat who wrote philosophical works and poetry that defended the rational capacity of animals, while being aware that the prejudices against non-human animals were similar to those against women in the society she lived in. Alison Stone looks at Frances Power Cobbe and the Philosophy of Antivivisection. Cobbe (1822 - 1904) was primarily a campaigner who approached animal welfare as a moral philosopher.
The essays about vegetarianism are particularly interesting, offering fascinating insights into historical attitudes to those who refuse to eat meat. Historical Christian attitudes to meat eating, fasting and asceticism are examined in some detail by both Marcello Newall in Biblical Veganism: An Examination of 1 Timothy 4:1–8, and Carl Frayne in On imitating the regimen of immortality or Facing the diet of mortal reality: A Brief history of Abstinence from Flesh-Eating in Christianity. In Morality and Meat in the Middle Ages and Beyond, Christene d'Anca examines how "contemporary decisions to abstain from animal consumption mirror medieval ones" and how ancient prejudice against vegetarianism continues even today, though the nature of the prejudice nowadays is not so religious as it used to be. Carl Frayne reappears, now writing as Carl Tobias Frayne with The Anarchist Diet: Vegetarianism and Individualist Anarchism in Early 20th-Century France looks at the historic links between anarchism and veganism.
The final section of the book looks at vivisection. In Vivisection, Virtue Ethics, and the Law in 19th-century Britain, A W H Bates outlines the difference between Virtue Ethics, which "asks how a virtuous person would behave in a particular situation and emphasizes character and motives" and Utilitarian ethics, which claim that "the medical benefits of vivisection outweighed any unpleasantness or suffering". The essay then details the anti-cruelty laws that were brought in during that century and how they applied to vivisection (which those days wasn't common in Britain compared to some countries in continental Europe). Later, in " Boycotted hospital: the national Anti-vivisection hospital, London, 1903–1935" the same author looks at the history of the hospital that for three decades "treated the local poor and conscientious objectors to vivisection, who were assured that staff pledged not to experiment on animals or patients." “The New Superstition, the New Tyranny”: The Ethics and Contexts of John Cowper Powys’s Antivivisection" by Felix Taylor examines the antivivisectionist writings of the generally overlooked British novelist and philosopher John Cowper Powys (1872–1963).
"Animal Research, Safeguards, and Lessons from the Long History of Judicial Torture" by Adam Clulow and Jan Lauwereyns uses the history of the safeguards used to limit judicial torture to explore how animal research could more effectively be limited and policed, as the accepted notion of 'reduce, replace and refine' in animal testing has proven to be open to confusion and loopholes that mean that more animal testing continues.
This well researched, copiously referenced book covers a variety of aspects of our treatment of animals and will appeal to students of history and animal studies, as well as people involved in animal rights and conservation. It's a fascinating read, though the very academic approach and content will be off-putting for many general readers.
Animal History edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, published (July 2025) by Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
Disclaimer: I was sent a free pdf of this book in return for an honest review.
On our recent holiday in Dumfries and Galloway, we visited the grounds of Drumlanrig Castle, which offer beautiful woodland walks. (There's also a nice cafe!).
The walks offer lovely views across the countryside
The woodlands were full of amazing fungi when we visited. We were particularly interested to see these Fly Agarics. The photo below shows a fully developed Fly Agaric
and below is a newly emerging Fly Agaric, as it breaks through the soil.
(Fly Agarics are poisonous).
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A year ago on my Crafty Green Substack, I posted about how a good friend had died and how I was hoping to deal with all the stuff she left behind. Today, for Recycle Week, I posted about my progress. You can read it here.
One of the conservation success stories of recent decades has been the return of the Red Kite to Scotland (this is something I'll write more about on my Crafty Green Poet substack next Wednesday). We've travelled along the Galloway Kite Trail a few times in the past, but never before had we done the walk at Parton. This short walk passes between a small area of ancient woodland on one side and fields on the other.
Also notable were the wonderful lichens on the trees and rocks, her are just some of them:
There are lots of hides around the reserve, including a couple of tower hides, which allow for long views across the reserve. From one of these we had a great view of a Marsh Harrier (only the second time we've ever seen this rare bird of prey). The photo below sadly isn't as great as the view was in real life.
Through those windows you can spy on birds including Tree Sparrows (which are sadly quite rare these days) and Willow Tits (which are even rarer). In the photo below, on the left of the feeder are two Tree Sparrows, on the right, at the front there's a Blue Tit, at the back is a tit, which I think is a Willow Tit, but it's not clear enough and it might be a (much more common) Coal Tit....
After exploring the WWT reserve, we drove to the nearby National Nature Reserve, where we were sadly defeated by the mud and so we then went to Caerlaverock Castle
and walked through the Castle Woods,
Note: we don't have a car of our own, we use public transport to get around in Edinburgh. However, we always hire a car when we visit Dumfries and Galloway, as otherwise it would be almost impossible to get around.
We spent much of last week in Dumfries and Galloway in the south-west of Scotland. We've visited this area many times, but there are still new places to explore. I'm not sure why it took us so long to get round to visiting Ellisland Farm, as it is very close to the hotel where we always stag, and I've already visited the other Burns museums in Dumfries. This farm was the home for Robert Burns for just a few years from 1788, but was the place where he wrote many of his most famous pieces including Tam O'Shanter. It's a very impressive museum, with plans to extend and develop it to preserve the built heritage and to further celebrate the legacy of Robert Burns.
and these impressive galls on the leaves of an Oak tree, the ones that look like miniature doughnuts are Silky Button Galls, the other ones are Spangle Galls
You can see a couple more photos from Ellisland (including the desk where Burns wrote) on my Shapeshifting Green Blog.
I'll be posting more photos from our holiday over the next few days!
This beautiful book looks at a number of fictional gardens, selected to offer a range of different types of gardens in different geographical locations and different genres of writing and including the sacred (the ancient Hindi epic Ramayana by legendary poet Valmiki) the famous (such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll) and the less well known (including Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths.) Each garden is lovingly recreated in exquisitely detailed paintings by Lucille Clerc, while Sandra Lawrence explores the role of each garden in its particular story and explores the inspirations that might have fed into the author's creation.
The first fictional garden to be discussed, is unsurprisingly, the garden of Misselthwaite Manor which appears in the 1911 classic The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who was herself a keen gardener. The garden, that we are told is mostly fictional, and the robin that lives there (based on a robin that Hodgson Burnett befriended in her own garden) serve to enable the protagonist Mary to discover her best self. In contrast, the garden in Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (a book that is forever, in my mind, connected to The Secret Garden by the trope of a child discovering a garden) is closely modelled on the author's own garden. Whether entirely fictional or closely inspired by real gardens, these are well described gardens. The garden in Patrick White's The Hanging Garden. however, is shown only obliquely as if the adults reading the novel aren't allowed to trespass into this garden where the young protagonists play. (This book is now on my wishlist, as I love White's writing, his wonderfully odd style that makes the reader look at things in a different way.) Another garden that is barely described is that in The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twen Eng, which uses the garden as metaphor for the impermanence of life. (I now want to re-read this book.) The maze in Larry's Party by Carol Shields is largely inspired by the author's own love of mazes, as is the protagonist's tour of mazes across Europe. The weirdest garden of all must be that of Death in Terry Pratchett's Mort, where everything is black and where shovelling manure may (or may not) turn out to reveal the uttermost secret of time and space.
The differing responses of characters to gardens is also explored, from Hercule Poirot's discomfort in Agatha Christie's The Hallowe'en Garden and the rabbits' fear of the gardener in Beatrix Potter's Tale of Peter Rabbit. Gardens are often presented as havens, not least in Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, where the characters find short-lived refuge from the realities of Mussolini's Italy. Another well-used trope is that of the garden gate as a portal, as in H G Wells' story The Door in the Wall, in which the main character repeatedly passes by the door to his dream garden without taking the chance to enter the garden itself.
As well as the gardens themselves, Literary Gardens looks at plants, including entirely fictional plants (such as the triffids in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids), poisonous plants (for example in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter) and 'world trees' including the Tree of Knowledge from the Bible and Yggrdrasil,from Nordic legend. I was interested to read that Alexandre Dumas' The Black Tulip, set during the historical Dutch tulip mania, set off a quest that is still going today, to grow a perfectly black tulip.
It's worth giving a good long look at the illustrations. The details are amazing - that really looks like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall hidden away in the orchid house in the illustration for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and how many bunnies can you find in the illustration for The Tale of Peter Rabbit?
Other works mentioned include the short stories The Enchanted Garden by Italo Calvino (whose parents were botanists) and Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf; Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca; Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim (Mary Annette Beauchamp); The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis; Sei Shonagen's Pillow Book; My Garden (Book) by Jamaica Kincaid, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Scene Two of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Not only a wonderfully vivid recreation of a variety of fictional gardens, this book also acts as a themed collection of literary reviews and as a guide on how to use gardens and plants in creating atmosphere in stories. After reading this, you'll not only want to re-read it again and enjoy the paintings, but you're likely to end up with a whole list of other books to read or re-read.
Literary Gardens by Sandra Lawrence, illustrated by Lucille Clerc, published (18 September, 2025) by Frances Lincoln, an imprint of Quarto.
Note: I was sent a free pdf of this book in return for an honest review.
Subtitled Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis, this is a book of informed optimism from the President and CEO of The World Resources Institute, an organization with over forty years of experience at the forefront of the climate movement. The book comes with high profile recommendation, including a foreword from Christiana Figueres, so I was delighted to be asked to review it. The chapters of this book are organized around 6 key themes:
Multilateralism: Countries Can Collaborate
Technology: We Must Innovate for Good
Business: The Limits of Voluntary Action
Justice: It Is Not a Choice
Cities: Laboratories for Change
Economy: A New Growth Story
Using these topics as the basis, this very detailed, impressively researched book explores various aspects of the climate crisis, sharing stories of initiatives that have worked, from the creation of extensive cycling infrastructure in Copenhagen to the large scale use of satellite photography to combat illegal deforestation to the successes of various high-profile international conferences over the years since the establishment
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The author is very good at identifying what is really important, the need for governments to work together, both with other countries but also with civic society and with business.
The real conclusion is that we need to change the systems we work with, to ensure that we can better address the issues we face. And here is where the optimistic view runs into problems. After reading all the inspiring stories of forward thinking cities, collaborative projects and creative solutions, I was left wondering how we are going to achieve the overall systems change that we need so that these individual beacons of hope can actually act as the basis for a sustainable future across the world. As the author says:
"we won’t achieve our goals unless we fix the overarching economic system that incentivizes pollution, deforestation, and economic inequality. These scourges aren’t glitches to be patched up one by one; they are design features of the very economic system we have developed over centuries."
Are we prepared to dismantle that economic system and if so, do we have any chance of dismantling it quickly enough?
I found this book both fascinating and hopeful and can definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in a cuatiously optimistic overview of where we currently stand in relation to the climate crisis.
The New Global Possible (9781633310667, Disruption Books, published 9 September, 2025
Disclaimer: I was sent a free pdf of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Although the trees are losing their leaves early due to the dry Spring and Summer we've had, the weather still feels like Summer here. We chose Arthur's Seat for yesterday's walk as I particularly wanted to see another Small Copper butterfly (one of my favourite butterflies) before the end of the season. And we were lucky! This beautiful little Small Copper posed for us on the path
We chose a different route than the one we usually use to walk round Arthur's Seat - partly enforced as part of the main route is closed due to the risk of rock fall after the recent fires on top of the hill. You can see some of the area affected by the fire in the photo below, though it may not entirely clear, the higher land in the background has been burned. The fire was probably caused by a carelessly dropped cigarette or similar and spread quickly in the dry conditions. It was put out pretty quickly by the fire brigade.
The views around Arthur's Seat are always beautiful
the hillside path
a view of Arthur's Seat itself
a view over to Calton Hill
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I'm delighted to have a poem included in the selection published by the Ekphrastic Review in response to the painting Eschatalogical by Kitty North.
I did my regular litter picking, wildlife recording walk along Edinburgh's Water of Leith this morning. It was a lovely morning, the sunshine looking lovely through the late Summer leaves
