30 Days Wild 2020 - week one

The Wildlife Trusts are again running their #30DaysWild initiative to encourage us all to observe and connect with nature and wildness around us. Corona virus lockdown makes things harder this year, but I'm determined to join in, even if it's only from my garden. I can still watch bees around the flowers, spot insects crawling through the grass, take a quiet few minutes forest-bathing under the trees, or just watch the rain pounding on the windows - because typically, after weeks of glorious sunshine, this week has marked the return to more 'normal' weather.
As a sort of warm-up, I persuaded my husband to take part in #nomowMay and leave the lawns alone for a while. As a result I now have a huge patch of daisies instead of plain green grass. Even though some of the high grasses have been cut, these flowers are staying for now. Maybe I'll make daisy chains as one of my wild activities.




I started this week with a different sort of art - making stars from tree and shrub clippings. Something to revisit around Halloween maybe.

A lot of my activities have been rather random - watching a robin hopping about the lawn while I sat in the shade, standing under the shelter of trees and listening to the rain drip and birds sing, and on a walk to the postbox I found honeysuckle flowering high up in a neighbour's tree. Standing under my own trees on a very windy day was more like forest surfing than bathing,




I spotted a goldfinch singing at the top of another's neighbour's leylandii. They don't often come into my garden but I've seen a couple of them around frequently through spring, and I'm hoping they may be nesting nearby. On Friday I nipped outside just before midnight to see the full strawberry moon,

 and Saturday was a round of torrential rain/blue sky and sun, repeated all day.









Sunday was a calmer day, and late afternoon I decided to go out - the first time since lockdown began - for a walk at Shipley Country Park. Spotting wild flowers, and walking under tall, old trees was a wonderfully refreshing change after so long.