Last week was a week with lots of work-related opportunities both to experience nature and to talk about it to others, and as a result, little time to write!  We had two full days at Low Burnhall with first year students, learning to do Phase 1 habitat surveys, in which we experienced nature in all its moods.  Monday was very wet – the only redeeming feature of our time in the field was learning that there really is a bird called a Grasshopper warbler and it lives up to its name!  I resolved to download the ‘Merlin’ app from the Cornell lab, on the recommendation of people who know much more about birdsong than me, in the hope it will help me learn more about an aspect of nature, which has been pretty much a closed book to me until now.  On Thursday we did have a little sunshine at Low Burnhall, enough to prompt the first Meadow buttercups of the year to open, but at lunchtime there was hail…

On days when I was working on the science site I noticed that the first Bluebells have joined the Wood anemones on Cardiac Hill now and, rowing, saw clusters of lime-green fruits on the Elm trees which overhang the River Wear.

When the sun does come out, dandelions are in flower everywhere, benefitting from the more relaxed mowing regime which seems widespread now.  We revelled in the scent of gorse on a sunny walk round the old pit heaps near here and enjoyed the wheeling and diving of lapwing over the fields.

On Friday I gave the talk about the Botanic Gardens Student Volunteer group to a small but engaged group of people from the ‘Psychologists for Environmental Action’ group and friends and colleagues from my own department.  I got lots of lovely feedback about the group and suggestions for future projects. The interesting discussion which followed included a contribution from a chemistry postgrad who’s discovered for herself the value of mindfulness and nature post-lockdown and has started her own Instagram account; taking close up photos of natural things which look quite ordinary till you look closely – also one of my favourite things.  Another fascinating contributor was an English literature PhD student writing about the transformative role of gardens in novels and how a garden can be a character in itself.  It was great to see such different ways of approaching the natural world.

My final ‘nature outreach’ activity of the week was Saturday afternoon spent on a ‘Moss safari’, with some of next year’s potential undergraduate students and their families.  The enthusiasm of some at finding a whole new world of tiny creatures just under their noses is infectious. Some people find the larger invertebrates such as rotifers and tardigrades fairly rapidly but the samples are always patchy.  We had a number of students not happy to look at others’ samples and absolutely committed to finding their ‘own’ tardigrades, however long it took!

In the garden, the first Welsh poppies are flowering alongside some Cuckoo-flower by the pond.  I’m enjoying the scent as well as the sight of prolific apple blossom and hoping for a crop to match, in due course.

In the allotment I finally planted peas and some mixed salad leaves.  Hoping for better weather and more time for this next week….

Cultural highlight this week was a performance of ‘Andalucia’ at Northern Stage in Newcastle, by the Daniel Martinez company. Described as a musical representation of the eight regions of Andalucia, the home of flamenco, the performance features singing, dancing and a chamber orchestra (with Martinez’s brother on Euphonium!) 

I’ve been reading both The Fraud, by Zadie Smith and The Lying Life of Adults by Elana Ferrante this week, but have finished neither! I have to admit that, though it’s a good read, I’m finding the interwoven stories of lives in London and on a Jamaican sugar plantation rather confusing in The Fraud, but that may partly be because I’ve read it over too slowly, over a long a period of time.  The Elana Ferrante book is a dark but funny coming of age tale of a young girl in Naples – a much easier read!