Category: Cycles
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The shortest day in Nowhere Wood
On the shortest day, 21st December 2025, under heavy skies, the light arrived reluctantly, like a visitor creeping late into a church service, hoping to be unnoticed. It arrived in Nowhere Wood as a diffused light, fading the dark into a gloomy, dignified grey. The leaf litter lay sodden and heavy, mud tugging at every…
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The spring…
This is the first part of a two-part story in the sustainable park series of stories. First comes the summer rain, after weeks of drought. Then the wet drizzly, misty days, then the powerful storm from the bay of Biscay, and gradually the water table rises from its summer low. The ancient spring fills and…
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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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Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets
It is a January morning, misty and still. The air hangs silently in Nowhere Wood. Suddenly close, but just out of sight, a loud and fast drumming shakes the stillness. Then a silent pause, followed by a quieter drumming coming from the other end of the wood. Let’s find the first drummer. He’s hard to…
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A spot for parks and town centres
The “fruit” of the London plane tree is actually a dense, ball-shaped cluster of individual fruits. These hang on long stalks, often in pairs, from the tree’s branches. The individual fruits are called achenes. Each achene contains a single seed. Attached to the base of each achene is a tuft of many thin, stiff, yellow-brown…
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What can eat a tree like this?
This story is about how a pair of tiny insects about 6mm long and their very hungry caterpillars can eat a large tree. Ash trees are beautiful: young trees have smooth grey bark, whilst older trees have bark that cracks to form diamond shapes, like the pattern we see on a chain-link fence. No one…
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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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Fruits of the autumn
Autumn is the time for fruits to become ripe enough for animals to eat. This time last year, Nowhere Wood was full of ripe acorns and the squirrels and birds had a heyday. This year, there are no acorns, at all. Life is uncertain, in Nowhere Wood. Somewhere, inside a fruit, is a seed and…
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It’s Flying Ant Day!
Today is Flying Ant Day: the day that ants take to the air and fly at the same time. The ants are from different colonies that can be several hundred metres apart. Let’s celebrate Flying Ant Day! To some, it’s a minor nuisance. They land in your lemonade, tangle in your hair, and make picnics…
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Climate change and the air
The air is all round us and is a mixture of many different gases. 78% of the air is made of nitrogen, which is the most common gas. This story is about two other gases found in the air – oxygen and carbon dioxide. We breathe in oxygen and use it to release…
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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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Climate change and the weather
Most scientists think that the Earth is getting warmer and that human activities are making it worse. This story looks at some of the evidence they use. Weather experts collect millions of temperature measurements from all around the world every day. They put these results into powerful computers that build a picture of the climate…
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The secret of the winter flowers
It’s January 1st and the floor of the wood is covered with fresh new leaves, growing in dense patches. The first flowers are starting to open. Within a week, the air is scented with a sweet fragrance. This is the winter heliotrope, which is just as much at home in Nowhere as it is in…
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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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Goodbye, for now
By late October, the last of the visitors are leaving Nowhere Wood. House martins are birds that build nests in the eaves of the surrounding houses. They fly by swooping up and down in the summer skies, feeding on flying insects. Then, suddenly, as the season changes, they leave. But where do they go?…
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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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What is a frog?
It is late February, the cold weather has moved away and the frogs have moved back in. It’s been a couple of years since they were last here, but here are their newly-laid eggs and the female is hiding beneath the leaf in the top left corner of the photograph. What is a frog and…
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Spring is coming!
Nowhere Wood on December 23rd was silent and still. The wood was in midwinter, at its furthest point from the Sun on its journey through the seasons. At only 7 hours and 49 minutes, this was the shortest day and darkness ruled the wood. From now onwards the days will get longer by about two…
