If you’re reading my blog for the first time then you might want to check out this post before reading any further. It explains what on earth this is all about!
For anyone who’s visited before, I hope you enjoy reading about all my ‘wild’ undertakings this week 😊
Monday 18th January 2021
I’ve started another challenge this week and I’m hoping it can dovetail beautifully with 356 Days Wild. It’s called 6 on 6. Basically, I have to try and walk 6,000 steps each day for 6 days of the week. So this morning I dragged myself out of bed and had a 5km jog. Some ‘wild’ highlights from my jog included seeing the first of the sun’s rays peeping through the clouds and hearing the blackbirds and sparrows squawking in the hedgerows.
Tuesday 19th January 2021
I got a bit geeky today and started a short online course about ecology and wildlife conservation on Future Learn. I don’t have a scientific background at all but this course looks really accessible and – hopefully – it’ll give me the chance to learn a few interesting things!
Wednesday 20th January 2021
I got a book last year called The History of the Countryside which was originally published in 1986. After starting to learn a bit about conservation last night, I thought I’d read the conservation chapter in the book to see what people in the ’80s were thinking. It was really quite interesting to see the author (Oliver Rackham) comment on the abundance of wildlife that existed in the 1940s and compare this to the decline of the 1980s. I often hear people mentioning how much more wildlife was around 40 years ago so it made me wonder what on earth the ’40s looked like! I also started the chapter on animal extinctions. This section was unintentionally more hopeful – some of the species mentioned (like the beaver, sea eagle, osprey and red kite) have made a comeback and that’s pretty uplifting!
Thursday 21st January 2021
I paused to take in the awesome power of the River Stour today. Heavy rain had fallen across a lot of England and it doesn’t take much for the river in our town to burst its banks. Luckily no one was flooded this time (unfortunately that wasn’t the case everywhere) and there was something quite beautiful about seeing the swollen river in the bright sunshine. I wasn’t able to take a picture of it this time but this photo was taken after some heavy rainfall over Christmas and gives you an idea of what I saw this morning.
Friday 22nd January 2021
I was on annual leave today so I channeled my ‘inner grandma’ and started a jigsaw. I’ve done this jigsaw once before (during the March lockdown) and it definitely counts as my ‘act of wildness’ because it is such a beautiful countryside scene.
Saturday 23rd January 2021
There was a very hard frost this morning and, in no time at all, I found myself sliding around on black ice as my partner and I made the most of our daily walk. It was pretty cold but had definitely been colder in the past few weeks. This was 100% the hardest frost we’d had though. Seeing the fields, hedgerows and trees shimmering with ice was definitely a treat!
Sunday 24th January 2021
I finished off a watercolour of some flowers this afternoon. I don’t usually focus much ‘art attention’ on plants but these tulips and hyacinths were gagging to be painted. I particularly enjoyed creating the lilac by mixing crimson, cobalt blue and white.
Ramblings of a (very!) amateur artist 