Week 26 has been and gone! And it included another urban (well, semi-urban) adventure!
Highlights:
🌿 More gardening delights
🥳 Birthday walks
🐸 Frog-spotting
🤓 Getting geeky in a museum
Short and sweet (not usually like me!) Enjoy and catch you next week! 😊
Monday 5th July 2021
I bought some plants from a peat-free nursery aggggessss ago. These plants are ‘pollinator-friendly’ and, miraculously, it seems like I’ve pretty much kept them alive. They look quite impressive in the garden at the moment and, though the photos don’t show it, I’ve seen quite a few bees and hoverflies enjoying the nectar! Apparently, they include: sweet scabious, garden strawberry, blue vervain and beardless rabbit’s-foot grass.
Tuesday 6th July 2021
This afternoon – after a long day! – I picked up my Well Gardened Mind book. I haven’t looked at this for quite a while and I just knew I needed to read a bit more of it today, despite the temptation to just put the telly on!
The chapter I’m reading is titled ‘Radical Gardening’ and it focuses quite a bit on community gardening. It’s in this section that I learnt about ‘Incredible Edible’ – a community initiative in Todmorden that started in the late noughties. After spotting a gap in access to fresh, local food, a couple of incredible women started planting, growing and nurturing edible plants. The community were then encouraged to take whatever fruits, vegetables and berries they wanted. What an absolutely amazing idea!
Wednesday 7th July 2021
Extinction. It’s a horrible topic in so many ways. And yet, as a BBC Wildlife Magazine article pointed out today, it’s also such a fascinating thing. How could creatures that dominated the oceans – or anywhere vaguely ‘marine’ – for 300 million years (trilobites) die out? The article was thoughtfully written, highlighting the natural reality of extinction (and the ecological niches it opens up to other species), but it also acknowledged that the current mass extinction is not inevitable or natural. It’s being fuelled by us.
Thursday 8th July 2021
It’s your birthday today (to-day)
Everybody sing hooray (hur-rayyy)
There’s a caaaat licking your birthday cake
It’s your birthday today.
Ok. I’m not exactly mad. But. You know I like a tune. And you know songs sometimes stick in my head. The ditty came from a birthday e-card that I received for the first time from my partner three years ago. And it was indeed my birthday today. So he sent it again. Blame him!
I had a lovely day and, after chatting to family and opening presents in the morning, I treated myself to a little walk. I saw a female mandarin duck on the river near Honington and some beautiful marbled white butterflies came to wish me a ‘happy birthday’ too.
Later, I saw some friends and went for another short walk with them. It suddenly got very sunny, which was such a birthday treat. Though I’m pretty sure I got a bit sunburnt…!
Friday 9th July 2021
My partner and I kicked off a long-weekend in Oxford today and walked lots and lots of steps.
After having a stroll around the city centre and a wander to University Parks, we headed along the Thames towards East Oxford and got off at Iffley Locks. To my absolute delight, a giant frog was sat on a small, quiet road, chilling in the shade.
I was shocked last week to find out that there’s only really one species of frog in England: the common frog. We saw lots of little frogs hopping around at Brandon Marsh so I naively checked online to see what species they might be. Turns out, there was only really one possibility. Spotting this beast in Iffley proved that the Brandon Marsh frogs must’ve been babies!
Saturday 10th July 2021
A 7-mile walk along the river was the highlight today. It started in Oxford and ended in a little place called Swinford. When my partner and I used to live in Witney (in West Oxfordshire), we occasionally did this walk in the other direction, after getting the bus to Swinford toll bridge. As I haven’t visited Witney since we moved two years ago, we decided to get our waterproof coats on and re-do the walk from the Oxford-end.
I had soggy feet for pretty much the whole day after the journey but it was definitely worth it. The start of the walk takes you north west of the city, parallel with the absolutely beautiful Port Meadow. The meadow has horses and cows and, on this stretch, we saw lots of greylag geese, Canada geese and mallards. A couple of people were also having a dip in the water – they were much braver than me! A crisp, white little egret was also nibbling away near the bank. I guess it was trying to catch a fish.
Once you get to Wolvercote (about halfway through the walk), the path becomes a bit rougher. We had to hop a flooded bit – that was fun! – and the droplets on the long grass completely drenched us both from the knees down. Perhaps it’s the rugged nature of this section that makes it so quiet and peaceful. Our only companions were the birds. Three kestrels chattered to each other across the field (I didn’t even realise kestrels made these sorts of noises – I’m wondering if they were juveniles) and the reed buntings and reed warblers looked like they were having a wonderful time in the rain.
Sunday 11th July 2021
Whenever we come to Oxford, we do quite a bit of walking – as you can see above! It’s amazing how much ground you can cover on a city-break. Though there’s a lot to see on an urban trek, today’s act of wildness was a bit different. One of the museums in Oxford has an exhibition on at the moment called ‘The Art of Advertising’. I absolutely love looking out for animals in exhibitions and this one didn’t disappoint. Just look at the Beecham’s one!
*For anyone new to my blog, let me explain a bit more about what these posts are about. Every week I share a summary of my daily ‘acts of wildness’. This wildlife challenge was inspired by ’30 Days Wild’ and ’12 Days Wild’ from The Wildlife Trusts. The ‘356’ isn’t a typo – typically, I only thought about doing this after 2021 had already started so I won’t be able to do a full year this time. Next year will be different though! Thank you and I hope you’ve enjoyed the post!
Ramblings of a (very!) amateur artist 