Category: folklore
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Cuckoo flowers in the spring
Spring has arrived—but the world is not yet settled. In an uncertain climate, people choose uncertainty and so does the weather. Sun, rain, frost and wind – the persistent wind blowing through the meadows. Spring marches onwards, regardless. The cuckoo flower with its dainty lilac flowers hides in the unmown grass, shielded from the biting…
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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 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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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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The fairy ring
Just outside of Nowhere Wood, next to the school playing fields, you can, on a summer evening, sometimes see a fairy ring. The photograph shows parts of this fairy ring: sometimes you can find rings that form a perfect circle. How many fungi can you see here? There are about 15 mushrooms – the…
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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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The Apple Tree Man of Nowhere
Once upon a time, there lived a young man called Henry Summers, who lived at the Farmhouse over at the East End, just below the quarry. He was a wise man, strong in the arm and of calm manner. He never beat his animals or his wife. The family farmed ten fields and had several…
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Yellow flowers
Early spring in Nowhere Wood is the season of yellow flowers. Cowslips have an inelegant name: originally called ‘cow slops’, they were thought to grow where cows have trodden their poo into the ground. The old Somerset name of “bunch of keys” is much nicer – the arrangement of flowers on the head were thought…