I’ve long been a fan of the Wildlife Trusts’ 30 Days Wild campaign, which encourages us all to spend a little time exploring nature every day for the month of June. Some years I’ve been better than others at signing up formally and posting my findings regularly online but, even when I don’t do that, I like to think it helps me stay focussed on the benefits of spending time in natural environments and encouraging those around me to do the same. This week offered plenty of opportunities for that. On a Bank Holiday walk up around Harehope Quarry and Frosterley with friends, we dodged the showers to enjoy a sunny picnic in a meadow full of Pignut and Bird’s-foot Trefoil above the River Wear and ambled through woods full of Meadow Saxifrage and Sannicle.

Meadow Saxifrage, Saxifraga granulata, was one of the earliest saxifrages to be classified by Linnaeus, in 1753, becoming the so-called type species for the genus Saxifraga. As mountain plants, saxifrages often rely on reproducing themselves vegetatively, to reduce the risk of pollinators not being abundant enough or seeds failing to germinate in unfavourable conditions. In lots of species this means producing runners, rather like a strawberry plant, but in the case of Saxifraga granulata the plant produces tiny bulbils in the leaf axils which are miniature clones of the parent.

Wild mallow is flowering now by the cycle path along to High Shincliffe and I saw my first zingy lemon-coloured Brimstone butterfly of the year on my ride to work, joining the Orange-tips I’ve been seeing for a while now.  It seems no-one has told this one that it is supposed to prefer members of the cabbage family to brambles!

A small murmuration of starlings surprised me cycling through the village early one evening and nearly made me fall off my bike. They were flying much lower than usual after feasting on invertebrates exposed on grassy areas which have been cut as soon as No Mow May ended.   Fortunately the university has taken a more enlightened approach.

There were fieldwork planning opportunities this week too.  A quick look at the mix of Pignut, Buttercups, Red Clover and Hogweed in the meadow behind St Marys college, on the hunt for a local site for wildflower ID training, convinced me it would be worth going back for some proper botanising.  Apparently there are Bee Orchids there…

On the first day of 30 Days Wild we were in Newcastle, enjoying the sound of the Kittiwake colony nesting on the ledges of the old Baltic flour mill, now art gallery, and the Purple Toadflax growing on the seawall. The photo doesn’t really do justice to the precariousness of its position!

In the garden, I’ve enjoyed watching bees visiting the large Foxglove growing underneath the apple tree and the roses are looking amazing. The Water Crowfoot in the pond has produced a few flowers – the first sign it has survived the winter. 

In the allotment I’m fighting a losing battle against Yorkshire Fog and Oat grass coming into flower and making my nose and eyes stream.  I got my Pink Fir Apple potatoes planted but the leeks and French beans I planted a week ago have all succumbed to the resident slugs and snails.   A kindly allotment neighbour has given me a replacement pot of leek seedlings but who knows whether these will fare any better.

Our culinary highlight was a trip to Khai Khai on the Quayside in Newcastle, with delicious daals, beetroot tiki and their signature tandoori broccoli, which Grace Dent agrees just shouldn’t taste as good as it does!

I’ve been reading To the River, by Olivia Laing, which at first glance seems like a traveller’s tale of a week spent walking the route of the River Ouse, in Sussex, from its source to the sea at Newhaven.  However it is much more than this, weaving together beautifully-observed natural history, the history of the river itself and the important role it has played in the lives of people, ordinary and famous, over the centuries.