My first ever blog post was all about trees. In early 2016 I wrote a list of tree-themed aspirations for the year ahead, including planting a tree, climbing a tree, getting better at identifying trees and learning the names of the trees on my street. It has taken me four years to tick off that …
Continue reading How and why I learnt the names of my street trees during lockdown
Christmas is going to be a little different for most of us this year. The recent Covid-19 lockdowns have given many of us a chance to think about how we can save money, reduce waste and be more intentional with our spending. Now that the festive season is upon us, I thought I'd put together …
Continue reading Eco-friendly ideas to save money this Christmas
It's the little things people do that will make the difference; my little thing is planting treesWangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Laureate 2004 Wangari Maathai, credit: Martin Rowe Kenyan activist, environmentalist, and 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai, would have been eighty years old this year. Although she lived many thousands of miles away, her legacy …
Continue reading National Tree Week 2020: Celebrating Wangari Maathai
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 …
It's time I let you in on a secret. For the last five years or so, Mr Rixon and I have been followers of a growing movement across the world known as financial independence (FI) or FIRE (financial independence, retire early). Our goal is to save up enough money so that we can quit the …
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 …
