Author: susurrus

Please visit my blog, where I celebrate gardening, nature, photos and creativity. As you'll quickly discover, I love most flowers. I'm here to have a little fun with other bloggers, finding new insights at every step of the way. I enjoy all forms of photography, from macro to more impressionistic shots, so often visit photography blogs to see what other people are sharing. I write about my other interests too including marketing, design, travel and writing - and, rather to my surprise - about the odd issue affecting us all that I just can't resist commenting on. The website link will take you to my home page, but please click on 'Blog' to see what I'm really up to!
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Attack on Nature: Do We Care?

Metal owl, back alley, Darwen, Lancs

Recent government announcements have united the UK’s leading nature charities in protest. Issues include:

  • Proposals that weaken our Habitat Regulations.
  • Creating large enterprise zones which will reduce the need for planning permission in areas that currently include, for example, Special Protection Areas for birds.
  • Rolling back the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) that encourages farmers to protect nature in favour of the old, often criticised method of paying landowners a set amount per acre of land owned.
  • An ongoing drought is drying up rare chalk rivers and all of our rivers fail to meet the chemical standards set for them.
  • British Woodland is becoming less diverse.
  • The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries, in the bottom 10% globally and last among the G7 group.

The Royal Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Birds (RSPB) has been leading the response. I’m not a bird photographer, so I’m using owl art for this post, owls being an old symbol of wisdom. And because art might be the only way future generations know some of the wildlife our society takes for granted.

Continue reading “Attack on Nature: Do We Care?”

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Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature

Wilde Weelde flower border with heleniums

While your eye may naturally pick out the flowers, when I was face-to-face with this memorable landscape, I marvelled at that long, structured wall of tree trunks and re-purposed construction materials in the background. The fauna wall was by far the biggest insect hotel I’d ever seen.

Ash logs and reclaimed material in the fauna wall

Broad swathes of the Wilde Weelde garden’s boundary are made from small sections of logs of different diameters, stacked leaving gaps between them – the log version of a dry stone wall, you might say. The effect reminded me of the ramparts of a castle, except these walls have gaps that a raider could saunter through. Continue reading “Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature”

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Quirky, Hand-made Wooden Gate

Wooden gate with quirky, wavy posts
More of a could-be or a used-to-be than an actually is?

I’m glad I’m not alone in being enthused by weird snippets and that I can share a few of them here as food for the imagination.

I think that this was a quirky garden gate, made from recycled wood, although at the time I thought it was a section of fence. It may or may not be to your taste, but it’s certainly a one-off. Continue reading “Quirky, Hand-made Wooden Gate”