Repairing a Chair

As a society these days we tend to be too eager to throw things away and buy new rather than repairing old things. Some things of course can't be repaired but it's a good idea to try to see whether you can get something repaired or even try to do it yourself. It can be quite satisfying to be able to complete a repair yourself.

Recently, I posted about how I'd used an old sock to repair the arm rest on a chair. In that post I mentioned that my next repair project would be to make a cover for the seat of another chair.

This is the sort of state this other chair had got into

and as I examined the whole chair I realised that making an actual cover for the seat wouldn't be the best solution. So to start with, I used some of the material used for stuffing toys to replace the lost foam from the seat

I sewed that onto the seat and then covered it with some felt (I had just enough of this felt to cover both damaged areas of the seat)

So now the chair is more comfortable and is protected against further damage. I may or may not make a cover for the whole seat.

Birds and Butterflies!

Today we saw this beautiful small tortoiseshell in North Merchiston Cemetery, it looks very fresh and new, as though it has just hatched

Meanwhile in Dalry Cemetery, this little robin came to say hello. It comes to say hello most days in fact! (I'm pretty sure it's the same one that comes to say hello, even though obviously there are other robins in the cemetery.)

Yesterday we also had some great sightings, including this red admiral, looking a little the worse for wear

this speckled wood

and this dunnock who was filling its beak with the sunflower seeds we had put out for the birds

Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for taking the photos in this post!

An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth

Mostly we think of birds in terms of how we see them, but this book turns the tables and imagines how birds see us. In only 100 pages, Richard Smyth takes us on a journey investigating how the human world affects birds.

Smyth looks at the ways in which we have changed things to favour some birds to the detriment of others. He considers how we look to birds, how they may value the food waste we leave and the accidental rockfaces that we create in our cities. He suggests that these artificial environments are just environments to the birds, if they can use these as they would another natural environment, then they will use them.

He tries to look at howa bird might feel if it is caught to be then reintroduced somewhere else, does the bird in fact accept this just as though this is what happens to every bird at some point in its life? We can't ever know whether this is true, but it's certainly an interesting perspective.

Red kites are once again thriving above British cities but, as Smyth points out, these cities now are very different environments than they used to be and how does that impact on the species? Do red kites have any sort of folk memory of how the city was for previous generations?

One of the most sobering insights in the book is the gradual (and therefore easily overlooked) nature of most of the damage that we are doing to the world. Sudden extinctions are rare, but gradual loss is all too common. How do birds see the gradual loss of greenspace that is happening across the world, moment by moment and tightening the world for many species of birds. We don't notice the loss of one or two house sparrows in our local area, how do the sparrows themselves see it? Will we continue making the world a more hostile place for most species of birds or will we find a new way forward to accomodate birds in our world?

I love how this book turns things around, away from a human centric view of birds to a bird centric view of humans (though obviously, given this is written by a human, it is only a reimagining of a birdcentric view).

"Better, perhaps to embrace the birds' indifference. To try to see that 'ours' is also 'theirs'. To watch kestrels hunt in the cathedral cloister and think not how wonderfully they set off the architecture, but rather  how wonderful it is that this thing we call 'architecture' has within it a whole other meaning, a whole alternative reality, a whole bunch of alternative realities: the kestrels' reality, the pigeons' or sparrows' or herring gulls' reality, realities of shelter, airflow, altitidue, prey, peace..."

An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth published by Uniform Books.

Tree Following Update

For Tree Following this year I've selected a beautiful horse chestnut tree in one of the cemeteries on our #DailyExercise route.You can see my first blogpost about this tree here, my second is here and my third is here.

Here are some photos of the tree over the past few weeks, firstly looking into the canopy:

The first yellow leaves appeared early in June, this photo was taken on 9 June

on the same day we noticed that some of the conkers were starting to develop their characteristic spikes

and this is how far the conkers (on a different part of the tree) have developed now (photo taken yesterday)

Of course, this horse chestnut isn't the only tree I'm paying attention to at the moment. We're lucky to have several beautiful lime (linden) trees near where we live and in the cemeteries which we visit for Daily Exercise. These are my favourite trees at this time of year as they are in bloom and they smell wonderful!

For Tree Following and Nature Notes.

A Visit to the Botanic Gardens

Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens have been  closed since the beginning of lockdown but have re-opened in the last couple of days. We managed to book a time-slot to visit today (you can book a visit here). Some areas of the garden are only accessible via a one way system and the cafe and restaurant are not yet open (though the toilets and shop are).

It was very rainy today but it was lovely to see the planted wildflower meadows looking beautiful, particularly as it is National Meadows Day today!

The lime (linden) trees are in bloom and smell wonderful

The demonstration wildlife friendly gardens are in bloom at the moment (and the camomile smells amazing!)

You can wander down the Scottish Tree Trail

And the rest of the gardens are as picturesque as ever

Plastic Free July

 

Plastics are in fact very useful materials, their correct use can help reduce food waste for example, but far too much plastic is used unnecessarily. 
 
Plastic Free July helps people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities.

Can you reduce the amount of plastic you use, by buying items that don't have plastic packaging or avoiding items made from plastic? 

The coronavirus pandemic has made the issue of plastic pollution worse as many places are now littered with discarded surgical masks and gloves, which not only are nasty pieces of plastic pollution but also a public health issue as they may be contaminated with the coronavirus. Reusable cotton masks are generally effective enough for general purpose use by the general public. (The Guardian has a sobering photo gallery of how plastic use is increasing hugely due to the pandemic).

The Plastic Free July website is full of ideas for how you can reduce your use of single use plastic at work and at home. 

What are your top tips for reducing plastic use? 

Uses for Old Socks

Crafty Green Boyfriend finally got his special office chair delivered to our flat a few days ago so he can work from home more comfortably. Once we managed to manoeuvre it through the slightly too narrow living room door, we noticed that one of the arm rests was starting to crack. I realised that it would be quicker to make a cover for it than to order a new arm rest so I pulled an old sock over the arm rest, secured the elastic round the back of it and then cut and sewed the toe end of the sock round the front of the arm rest:

It looks okay and will prevent the armrest cracking any further.

It's always worth keeping old socks, you never know when they may come in useful.

The next repair challenge is to make a cover for the seat of another chair, I hope to be able to share the results of that soon, but it will be a more challenging project.