Beauty in the Rain and a Celebration of Microseasons

 We had a huge thunderstorm last night in Edinburgh, something like 2/3 of the month's rain fell in one day. It's been raining for most of the day today as well. I walked through Craiglockart and Colinton Dells to do my regular volunteering with Water of Leith Conservation Trust.

The wildflower meadow near Bog's Bridge is looking lovely 

as are the hornbeam trees, which are currently fruiting  

The water is very high at the moment, both in the small burn behind the Grotto (where ladies used to sit while their men were hunting deer, back in the day)

and at the weir at Colinton 

The snails were enjoying the wet weather

The sun did come out at one point

but then it started raining again and hasn't stopped since! 

I read today about the Japanese idea of micro-seasons, which you can read about here, in which the year is divided into 24 periods based on classical Chinese sources. The natural world comes to life in the even more vividly named 72 subdivisions of the traditional Japanese calendar. Noticing Nature is the UK micro-seasons project, which you can follow on Twitter here. 

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I was delighted recently to be interviewed by Maya Rajesh on her Pretty Little Scribbles blog. You can read the interview here.