When they walk along our road, or round the park or through the woods - my children always find a stick to carry with them. Depending on its length, and size and straightness, a stick can be many things... It can be a spoon for stirring a witch's brew or mud pie mixture simmering away …
Credit: Peter Neumann, Unsplash I've always had mixed feelings about Halloween. On the one hand, I love the celebration of autumn and the feeling of liminality that the date conjures up. On the other hand, I could really do without all the plastic rubbish. A report by The Fairyland Trust (a charity that gets children …
Celebrating the diversity and complexity of the hidden world of bugs
Today (21st October 2020) is the 30th anniversary of Apple Day and I thought I'd mark the occasion by telling you about two urban orchards close to where I live in North London - one around one hundred years old, the other just ten. Apple Day was founded by Common Ground in 1990 as an …
Reliving the Grand Haringey Fungus Foray - my initiation into the weird and wonderful world of fungi
I have always dreamt of keeping bees. On my good life wish list, it has ranked somewhere alongside tending an orchard, building a treehouse and creating a wildflower meadow for many years. Lately, I have been reading bedtime stories to my children from a book called Tales from the End Cottage, which has rekindled that …
We are lucky to have a lovely little open space at the end of our road. The bigger parks can get too busy for my liking but Brunswick Park is nearly always quiet. During the lockdown we have been there lots and lots. Even while the playground has been closed, we have made our own …
Lesson two: Don’t piss off the locals. I’m talking about the four-legged, bushy-tailed, red-furred, nocturnal, cunning kind. Upon moving in we discovered that a family of urban foxes was using our garden and its neighbouring ones as a ‘suite of rooms’. The south-facing garden with the wide, sunny lawn? The playroom. The overgrown garden full …
It's been a loooooooooooooong time since I last wrote. I’m now mum to two beautiful, delightful and extremely cheeky daughters: Gwendolyn (aged three) and Josephine (aged one) and right now, while on lockdown in our terrace house in Tottenham, London, with their daddy, and our two cats, I’ve decided it’s finally time to dust down …
When you start pushing a pram around London you end up discovering lots of hidden green patches and pockets you never knew were there before. At least, that's what I have done. In the old pre-motherhood days I would stride the quickest route I knew from A to B, from our house to the tube, …
Continue reading Discovering new green spaces and planting trees on them
