Woodland Trust Volunteer of the Year Awards!

Crafty Green Boyfriend and I travelled down to Grantham in Lincolnshire on Friday to attend the Woodland Trust Volunteer of the Year Awards ceremony at the Belton Woods Hotel. I was delighted to have been nominated for one of the awards.

On the Friday we arrived early enough to have a dusk walk through part of the lovely wooded nature trail that runs around the grounds of the hotel.

Yesterday morning we revisited the nature trail to explore it a bit more before attending the event. It's a nice area of mixed woodland

we were tempted to wait to see if a badger would emerge from the hole! We found another hole too, the sett seemed to be quite extensive

 and we were impressed by this little patch of oyster fungi

Less than impressed to see this sign on the fence, but then this is England, not Scotland, where we have the right to roam....

Then we returned to the hotel, scrubbed the mud off our shoes and went to the event

The event consisted of speakers, a three course lunch and an awards ceremony. I was delighted to be shortlisted for the 'Juniper Award' which recognises volunteers who provide their voices to protect and raise awareness of woodlands and the work of the trust in protecting them. It was great to see the videos about the work of the winning volunteers in the various categories, a very inspiring group of people!

So thank you  to the Woodland Trust for a great event to recognise the work of volunteers and  in particular for shortlisting me from such a large pool of inspiring volunteers!

Also thanks to Belton Woods Hotel for being a great venue, the nature trails were a great draw, but also the food is great and the staff  are incredibly helpful and friendly. Though the hotel corridors are a maze!

The Canal approaching Winter

It was so cold yesterday that the Union Canal started to freeze!

The gulls and mallards weren't sure what to make of the new conditions, though the old boat house reflects beautifully in the ice 

Fallen leaves look beautiful in the wintry light

Ghost Moon and Schrodinger's Cat

Yesterday's ethereal ghost moon in Edinburgh

Meanwhile I'm delighted that my story about Schrödinger's Cat 'In the Box' is now up on Quantum Shorts, a website devoted to stories inspired by Quantum Science. There are some great stories on the site, so feel free to browse them here. Or you can go directly to my story here (and you can vote for it if you want!)

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can read more!

Winter Trees

It's a  beautiful late autumn day today, almost wintry with the cold and frost!

The trees certainly look wintry in Craiglockart Dell along the Water of Leith. This is my favourite larch tree in the Dell, the larch is the only species of conifer that loses its needles in the winter, which is why they're all yellow!

A few years ago I studied this larch for Tree Following and here you can read my post about how the larch flowers develop through the year.

Here's a selection of other winter trees in the Dell

It's National Tree Week in the UK, a time to celebrate trees at the beginning of the winter tree planting season! Find out more from the Woodland Trust, here.

Book Week Scotland

It's Book Week Scotland! A chance to celebrate books and literature! You can find out more on the Scottish Book Trust's website here.

The Book Trust has put together lists of books for different ages annd on different topics, which you can browse here. Alternatively if you're interested in books about nature and environmental issues, you can browse my book reviews here. 

There are events all over Scotland too, you can find out what's happening near you here.

Hordur - film review

After being bullied mercilessly by her classmates, Aylin (Almila Bagriacik) a 17-year-old Muslim girl of Turkish descent gets into trouble with the law and  is sentenced to community service at an out-of-town horse stable. Things don't immediately go well as the owner of the stables is too distracted by her own disintegrating homelife to want to offer support and training to a troubled treenager. However Aylin soon discovers a bond with the spirited and beautiful Icelandic horse Hördur and a talent as a horserider. 

Can she persuade the stable owner to let her enter a riding competition and can she persuade her father that horseriding is a worthwhile pursuit? 

Aylin's daily struggles at the stables, at school and at home (where she looks after her younger brother while her widowed father works all hours in low paid labouring jobs) are intercut with beautiful etehreal dream sequences where she rides a horse through a mystical woodland.

This is a wonderful coming of age film that offers insight into the difficult lives experienced by many migrant workers and the transformations that relationships with animals can make.

Hordur had one screening today as part of the Fokus season of German films at Edinburgh Filmhouse.

A Woodland Walk to mark the start of National Tree Walk

Today we walked round Corstorphine Hill, but chose a different part of the hill than we normally walk on a Friday lunchtime (you can see the photos from yesterday's walk here).

It was a frosty start to the day, but this only enhances the autumnal colours

the orange conifer tree in the photo above isn't ill, it's a larch and is the only conifer to change colour  and lose its needles!

There were a lot of birds to see, most appropriately for National Tree Week is this lovely treecreeper

also several bullfinches, though they wouldn't pose for a group photo, there is a 2nd male in this photo, can you see him?

Corstorphine Tower, a monument to Sir Walter Scott rises above the trees at the top of the hill

The paths are carpeted with leaves, I love the copper carpets under the beech trees.

National Tree Week marks the start of the winter tree planting season and you can find out more here.