Blog Posts

Feeling Guilty & Making a Path & Pond in the Woods

12/1/2023

The trouble with a blog is that if you neglect it you feel guilty. It's not that I haven't been doing anything in my garden in the last 4 months. Far from it. Its more that I have redirected my website efforts to my voluntary work wth RE-Betchworth. I set up a new biodiversity website to record and curate my activities, inquiries and movies in and around Betchworth. https://rebetchworth.weebly.com/ I also began a new magazine project to communicate the work of our group. Because I was doing these other things I tell myself I shouldnt feel guilty, but I do because my garden and blog are part of me.

So what have I been doing in my own garden? Well my efforts in the last few months have been focused on the woodland. On November 15th - just as the rains began! I started making a path. More accurately I started making a pond but decided that I needed to make a path next to the pond and once I cleared the ground for the pond and started digging a hole - making the path became the main project.

I wanted to create a path that arced through the middle of the woods about 50m in length. I had to clear the scrub by hand and the ground was very humocky so there was quite a bit of digging and leveling to do. Aftyer that I laid down roofing felt, carpet and plastoc sheets to discourage the brambles and for my base I used a thick layer of wood chips. But the wood chip pile was about 100m away so I had to barrow in about 50 loads of wood chip. It was a bit of a marathon but I was spured on by the quote that was attributed to the great Hanibal who crossed the Alps - "we will find a way of make one", Well I was definitely making one here.

I get distracted very easily so as I was building the path to relieve the monotony of wheel barrowing I also carried on digging out a small pond and then expanded it by digging ditches in the Gault Clay. Then I had to build a bridge over the ditch I had dug. I edged the path with tree trunks that had been cut from trees that had been felled. All the time it rained and rained and I was often knee deep in mud.. But by the end of December my woodland path was complete.

Cold Snap

11/12/2022

We had a week of very cold weather. Unfortunately our boiler wouldnt work as the condensate pipe was frozen so it was pretty cold inside as well as outside. But the icy frosty landscape is always a delight to experience.

B-LInes an Inspiring Idea

10/11/2022

I quite like to be inspired by an idea and earlier this week, while participating in a Surrey Wildlife Trust webinar I encountered the idea of B-Lines (Biodiversity – Lines) - a UK-wide network of 3km wide corridors to encourage the development of wildflower habitats to enable insect pollinators to flourish. The northern part of Betchworth - Betchworth Hills and the Coombe lie within the Surrey Hills B-Line in fact the southerem edge of this B-Line runs a few yards north of my home.

Pollinating insects carry pollen with them as they move from flower to flower. Their pollination services are essential for the fertilisation of many plants, including the ones we like to eat. Although honeybees get most of the credit, there are at least 1,500 insect species that pollinate plants in the UK. In the last 80 years we have witnessed a rapid decline in the number of pollinating insects and an estimated 97% of wildflower meadows. This loss of biodiversity is directly linked to the urbanisation and the intensification of agriculture and increased use of pesticides and herbicides.

The idea of B-Lines seems like an imaginative solution to an important biodiversity issue and I can see how I can use it to make a contribution to a national biodiversity project.

Dry summer

13/8/2022

With no significant rain for over nine weeks we are in drought conditions. Small streams have dried up and only deeper rivers and ponds are now sustained. Furthermore, grasslands are now shrivelled and burnt. The local rainfall chart shows that we have had below average rainfall for 6 of the last 8 months.

Listening to radio 4 I learnt a new word last week - skein - the name for a flock of geese flying together in a V formation. The timing of this was very useful as for the past week each evening we have had geese flying overhead in a skein.

The loss of grassland due to drought in our area has triggered our resident Canada Geese that live in and around Buckland Lake to leave the lake in the day in search of grass. Their diet consists primarily of grass and a goose will eat up to 3 lbs of grass per day so it becomes a serious matter when the local food supply is lost. Over the last week at dusk (around 9pm) I have heard the honking sound of large numbers of geese returning home to roost as they fly in a line or skein, from their feeding ground to the west to Buckland lake. It is a most maginficent site. Unfortunately it is too dark to film at this time but here is a film I made of a similar daily migration in 2019.

Butterflies

21/7/2022

It’s been a hot summer, in fact the record for the highest temperature in the UK was broken as we reached 40C. The chest high grass in the field is now straw yellow. The big butterfly count has begun and over a few days I photographed the butterflies in the field.

Orchids in the wildflower meadow

8/7/2022

Wildflower Meadow

12/6/2022

June is the best month for wild flowers and this year, I didn't cut the grass and recorded the flowers as they grew from March. It teaches us a lesson in what nature can do if we leave it alone. This year I discovered three different wild orchids - common spotted, pyramid and bee orchids.

I learnt a lot about managing a wildflower meadow from this video.

Lets get creative woodland digital art

17/5/2022

In the last few weeks I have spent many hours walking in the woodlands near my home and taking photographs of the arrival of spring. The experience was deeply satisfying and I felt spiritually engaged. This week is 'Lets Get Creative' week in the UK and we are encouraged to get outside! Inspired by David Hockney's arrival of spring ipad paintings, I converted some of my photographs into digital art using the fantastic Lunapic free app. I used Hockney's painting "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire 2011", as a filter to give me another perspective on the beauty of the natural world around me.

Life Beyond My Garden

16/4/2022

Since I started my blog 4 years ago, with rare exeptions, I have kept my posts to my garden. But
in March 2022 I joined a group of environmental activists in my village - the climate and ecology action group, which is engaging in activities to encourage a greener, healthier village. One of the reasons for joining the group was to force myself to broaden my horizons so I have decided to expand my blog to take in the natural environment of which my garden is a part.

My practical contribution to the community action plan is concerned with biodiversity and the creation of maps of habitat-types in the area around the village. I had to create a new website to support the project and this will contibue to be developed throughout my involvement with the group https://rebetchworth.weebly.com/

Spring is in full swing. Its my favourite time of the year and I wanted to immerse myself in it so I decided to make a movie to celebrate ithe signs of spring in some of the woodland areas near my home. Over three days I visited three different woodland (including our own) and photographed the plants – mainly wild flowers and trees and shrubs that were in blossom or coming into leaf. On two of my explorations I was accompanied by my youngest daughter who also loves nature and it was a delight to have her company and her knowledge – she is very interested in plants. We used the PlantNet App to help me identify the plants. I then spent another day assembling my photos using windows moviemaker and adding music and then overlaying text to name the plants. When finished I uploaded it to my biodiversity website https://rebetchworth.weebly.com/education.html

By immersing myself in nature through my woodland walks – it did something to me and I tried to celebrate some of its wonder and splendour in my movie. The intention to make a movie forced me to learn as I had to identify the plants I was photographing using PlantNet and I watched several YouTube clips that explained the natural signs of ancient woodlands including the indicator plants. In this way I improved my understanding of the significance and meaning of what I was observing and my enjoyment of it.

I shared my movie with my planning group. It was great to receive their positive feedback and the leader of the group shared it with the village Whats App forum with an invitation to share their photos of plants and animals that they had spotted while out walking. I felt I had made a useful contribution to our collective project.

Displaying and sharing projects on Google Earth

4/2/2022

Google Earth is one of the most useful bits of free to use software available for making maps of the world. The creation tools allow you to easily create and share maps and stories. You can create a project on any subject of your choosing, drawing placemarks, lines and shapes, adding rich contextual information to your places (text, links, images, videos, 3D views and Street View), and organising your project into a narrative flow. You can share your project and collaborate with others. In presentation mode, viewers will fly from one place to the next following the narrative of your project, immersing them in the journey through Google Earth’s imagery and the custom content that you provide.

To find out how to create a map visit Google Earth Tutorial

I am using it to display some of the projects I have been working on aimed at creating a healthier more sustainable regenerative world. The link will take you to my project file in Google Earth.

To view the interactive map please click the link below
Projects for a healthier, sustainable and regenerative earth

PATHWAYS DIARY
In March 2023 I began an experiential inquiry called Pathways to a Sustainable Future and many of my posts between March-September were written for this project.
Diary Starts Here

Garden Notes
My garden is much more than a garden. Its playground, a studio for my artistic efforts, a natural laboratory for experiments and learning and a place for contemplation. It keeps me busy and gives me the exercise I need to keep fit, although it does damage me from time to time. But more than anything else it gives me pleasure, happiness and a sense of belonging and of doing something useful and worthwhile when I am immersed in it. It enables me to express myself creatively and draws my attention to the beauty and ecology of life. In this blog I am telling the story of my garden and my involvement and experiences in it through my writing and the photos, movies, music, paintings and other artefacts - it inspires me to create. I have become more conscious of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and our important role in enabling their achievement my experiments and projects in the natural world show how I respect and try to understand nature and try to enable life to flourish. I know that one day I will not be the custodian of this beautiful landscape we call our home. I must make the most of it now and preserve its presence in my memory knowing that it will carry on long after I am gone and that someone else will care for it and call it their home.
In March 2022 I joined a group of environmental activists in my village and so I have decided to expand my blog to take in the natural world around me.

Useful Links
RE Betchworth
Wildlife Garden Forum
Surrey Wildlife Trust
Habitat Network
Plant Identification UK
GAIA
GOOGLE EARTH

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