30 Days Wild - week one

While I was away last weekend my 30DaysWild pack arrived. It has a planner to organise the month, a booklet with a handy 101 suggestions of how to go wild, some stickers, and wildflower seeds. Meanwhile, it hasn't been a particularly 'wild' week but once you start looking there are lots of things to be seen.













Day 1- a trip to Manchester didn't seem like a particularly 'wild' way to start the month, but it turned out to be more so than I expected.

I spotted ox-eye daisies flowering on many roadside verges











a brave group of poppies in the central reservation of an urban dual carriageway





and elderflowers and wild roses growing wild in a hedgerow.

















Day 2 - Visited National Trust's Quarry Bank Mill where it was nice to see sections of grass around the car park had been left to grow long, with clover to attract bees, while squirrels scampered around the rhododendrons of the gardens.















Later in the day we stopped at Bugsworth canal basin near Chinley. Again I found ox-eyes daisies colonising a strip of roadside verge, but the real delight was seeing this family of geese waddling alongside the canal.




















Day 3 A lovely evening tempted us out to Tissington for the well-dressings, and being in the Derbyshire countryside there were lots of wild things around - a froth of cow parsley, a buttercup meadow, ducklings leaving the village pond and walking down the street, and owls hooting as the sun set

Day 4 - a wet day, spent mainly indoors, but with brief dry spells during which I went outside and listened to birdsong.














Day 5 - a bee-watching day in the garden. They're very busy round the purple sage flowers but I couldn't photograph them there. For some reason they were happier to stay longer on the pale pink geranium flowers

 Day 6 -  a different sort of wild; forget-me-nots and buttercups taking over an old vegetable patch, while roses climb all over the trellis.

Another sort of bee spotted on nettles, and a ladybird on thistles.

Day 7 - this first week ended on another wet day. Possibly the wildest thing I did was walk down the garden and get soaked by the flowers and herbs which overhang the path. Here's something wild from my garden though - I've no idea where this came from, maybe seed hidden in compost or dropped by a bird, but it's pretty, so I left it.

30 Days Wild

30 Days Wild is a Wildlife Trust initiative to encourage us to all get out there and add a bit of wildness to our lives during this coming month. I heard about it just a little too late last year (plus there were all sorts of bad things happening back then). This year I spotted a post about it on social media and, needing some sort of focus to my life right now, I decided to sign up. I haven't received my pack of ideas yet, so for the first few days I'll be making it up as I go.






 Different people obviously have different ideas about what exactly constitutes 'wild', and I think mine will be a very tame version of it. I won't be going completely off-grid, or trekking through a mountains, but I like to spend a fair amount of every day outside, gardening or walking, and with a little thought I'm sure I can make that time 'wild'.




Maybe I'll just watch the bees buzzing around my garden flowers, or the blue tits splashing in the birdbath. I could go out to a local nature reserve to spot waterfowl, or a local park to see squirrels. On the fifteenth of the month I'll definitely be heading to Wildside Festival, held by the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust on their farm near Ilkeston - it has bug-hunting and pond-dipping events for children but I probably won't join in with those, just sit on the grass (hopefully in the sunshine) and listen to music. It's still being 'wild' though, and supporting a good cause




You can find out more about #30DaysWild here on the Wildlife Trust's website, and follow the tag on Twitter