Category: being and becoming
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The Queen of May
May Day is gathered together in Nowhere Wood. The guests are all assembled, having arrived in timely order, ready for the magical day. First to arrive was the wild garlic, clean and green with the freshness of a memory of good times around the family table. Then the first bluebell opened up to the sky,…
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The titmice of Nowhere Wood
[titmice is an old English name for birds of the Paridae family, including blue and great tits. It is also a term familiar to the American readers of these stories.] This is a bright and early sunlit story, chipper with the sounds of Spring: “Ti-ti-pu, ti-tipu….tsee-tsee-tsee”. The quick, little, sharp notes, ticking up from the…
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The badgers of Nowhere Wood – a February story
There are badgers in Nowhere Wood. For the first time, we think. This is their February story. Imagine living in a dark world shaped by scent, vibration and touch — where wind carries stories and the air itself guides you back to the mouth of your sett. A world of kinship and inherited ground. Of…
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The wise birds of Nowhere Wood
After dark, we can hear the tawny owls that live in the old oak by the pond, calling to each other, “tu-wit, tu-woo”. In the woods and hedges around the hamlet of Nowhere, where the ancient oaks keep their own counsel and the paths disappear at dusk into darkness, there is an old tree with…
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The tunnelling armies beneath carpets of gold
It is early November in the park, and carpets of fallen leaves are piling up across the earth in sodden heaps, driven by the autumn winds and rains. The browns of the oak, the sycamore ambers and the golds of the beeches. Beneath the old apple tree, the king of the orchard, fallen apples lie…
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Trick or treat?
A traveller on the pathways, weary after many miles of walking, looks up into the hedgerow and sees the silky feathery threads surrounding the dark fruits. The sight brings the traveller an uplifting joy, at least according to John Gerard in his 1597 herbal. He called it ‘travellers joy’. It has other names. It is…
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Celebrating mushroom season!
Everyone agrees, it is an outstanding mushroom season. The dry summer and the warm wet autumn have created the perfect conditions for these mysterious forms which spend most of their lives living underground. Quietly, but with ruthless effectiveness, they influence and shape the growth of the trees in the wood. But, what is a mushroom?…
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A different kind of woodpecker
If you look carefully at this image, you can see another woodpecker, but one that is quite different to the great spotted woodpecker that starred in our last story. This is a green woodpecker. Can you see why? These two kinds of woodpecker are able to live together all year round in…
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Days of gentle ripening
It is mid-July and it has rained for the first time in several weeks. Gentle warm rain, interspersed with strong sunshine. These are the days of gentle ripening, to complete the work that started in in the blossom season of the early spring. The orchard in Trendlewood Park has a collection of ripening fruit trees…
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If a tree falls….
It was a stormy August night in Nowhere Wood. The wind was tearing through the leaves and branches and was strong enough to pull the whole tree down. And so, a tree that had been growing in the Wood for fifty years or more was felled to the floor of the wood. …
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I bear their homes, too
For Jules Acton, author of Oaklore. The old oak tree said to the traveller passing by: “You know me, you see me everyday. I am that oak tree that has stood here longer than any of can you remember.” “I am on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map and I was a sturdy tree, even back…
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What’s in a name?
This fungus grows in Nowhere Wood. It has the glorious scientific name of Polyporus squamous. That’s hard to say, harder to spell and even harder to remember!! Scientific names are important though: they give the accurate name of the organism, and they also tell scientists quite a lot about how the organism lives. These scientific…
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A tribute to fallen trees
The trees in Nowhere Wood are always there, going quietly through the motions of the seasons: noticed only when we stop to look and reflect. But we feel their presence strongly, just out of sight and mind. Until today, when their absence feels like the loss of dear friends. It only took a morning, and…
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A home for the summer
By the high summer of July, the new fresh leaves of the horse chestnut are losing their lustre. The proud spread of leaves are now crumpled and marked—creased with dry, papery wounds edged in rust. At first glance, it looks like disease or drought. But the truth is stranger, and smaller. These are the workings…
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The greening of Nowhere Wood
It is a cold and wet April in Nowhere Wood, which is full of birdsong and flowers. The trees are becoming green with new leaves. Leaves grow silently that we can miss their unfolding, noticing only when they are fully opened. If you look carefully, you can see new leaves opening today. It raises our…
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The Lords and Ladies of Nowhere Wood
Nowhere Wood in late winter is a place of bare branches, weak shadowy light and unspoken secrets, waiting for new leaves start to emerge. On the woodland floor, hidden beneath the shade of hazel and hawthorn, something strange is happening. By April, it is fully revealed. It’s not flashy, no pretty flower show. Just a…
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A tale of two butterflies
It is a sunny afternoon in May and two butterflies are flying round each other in a shaft of sunlight. The smaller one chases the larger one away. I first thought they were a courting pair, but then realised they are different types. Where do they come from and what are they doing in the…
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Safety in numbers
These animals look like cars parked in the autumn sunshine. They look harmless enough, but they have some gruesome secrets. What are they and what are they doing? They are called cluster flies, and they are warming their bodies in the sun, before flying to feed on the fruits of the wood. They are having…
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Time travellers to Nowhere (3)
We are in Nowhere Wood, about 300 million years ago, staring at a forest of tree ferns, watching them make oxygen. Over the years, these tree ferns have made so much oxygen that its concentration in the air has risen to about 35%, (compare that with the 21% found in the 21st century). There is…
