This week’s opportunities for nature connectedness have been rather more limited than last but the Bluebells have made up for it!  I’ve taken to walking diagonally down through High Wood to Physics or the Teaching and Learning Centre at the slightest excuse, purely for the joy of walking through Bluebells, unfurling Male ferns and flowering Wood rushes.

On Tuesday Gill and I had our annual pilgrimage to enjoy the sight and fragrance of masses of Bluebells in Hollingside Wood.  It’s not just Bluebells of course; there are pops of white and pink Stitchwort and Red Campion, patches of delicate Wood Speedwell and swathes of Wild garlic in flower amidst the blue and the first Hogweed and Cow parsley of the year have burst into flower in the hedgerows after a few warm days.

I finally got my light trap out for the first time this year but the haul was disappointing – just a single  Hebrew Character moth. Seeing an Orange-tip butterfly flitting around the garden partially made up for this, though. I’ve been looking carefully at the Garlic mustard growing under our apple tree but haven’t yet seen any tiny orange eggs.

I ran the first of a series of ‘active revision’ sessionsfor my first year ‘Organisms and Environment’ students this week, ambling round the Botanics with them to look at how plants have evolved over time from tiny mosses and liverworts, through ferns and horsetails to the gymnosperms and flowering plants.  Getting students to look with a hand lens at the tiny gemmae in a crescent-shaped cup on the surface of a Lunularia thallus or at the delicate grill at the end of a moss sporophyte through which the spores are shed is always a ‘wow’ moment. As is tapping a young male pine cone to demonstrate just how much pollen a wind-pollinated tree has to produce to ensure its high risk pollination strategy succeeds!

By the end of the week, many trees are suddenly green, with the notable exception of the Ash trees lining the road at High Shincliffe.  Whether it’s a case of “Oak before ash, in for a splash” or the effects of Ash dieback will soon be apparent. Oak trees everywhere are certainly greening up now.

In the allotment I’ve been weeding again and planting more peas and some herbs.  I’ve decided that Shining cranesbill, Geranium lucidum, is my new favourite ‘weed’ – a good thing as it’s growing well on bare patches of soil.

This week I’ve finished reading The Fraud, by Zadie Smith but am enjoying The Lying Life of Adults by Elana Ferrante. Time for some more nature reading now, I think…