What a thoroughly miserable day it was yesterday. Nothing was planned, besides needing a quick trip for groceries but it felt like the weather had brought my world to an unwanted stand still. Yes, that’s being a bit overdramatic lol. But can we just have our normal rain again and not this soaking, mirroring the contempt poured down from the House of Commons, telling the country it’s raining when they have thrown so many of us under the bus for the foreseeable future, quite probably for the reminder of my life if the paper is correct, let alone the dereliction of duty to the environment. Sorry, I was derailed – like a good part of the population. I feel betrayed.

Waiting for a pause in the rain, I picked up the ‘Rewild Yourself 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible’ that I featured recently. Chapter 2 begins with a quote from Wallace in The Wrong Trousers; it would be mean to the author, to give too much away but ironically, the chapter offers the observation that people allow rain to obstruct engaging directly with nature – and he is absolutely correct >>>

Brightened up the dreary day outdoors; feel sure there is a slim connection with Buster Keaton’s The General.

Being indoors, because I do have the wrong trousers, is absurdly interrupting my direct engagement with nature but I find myself clinging on to the native plants theme from my last post because of the importance of potential threats from invasive species.

These invasive species unbalance the local ecology and biodiversity – think grey squirrels and japanese knotweed. There are rare instances where the invasion proved beneficial (mussels for instance). The environment is struggling enough already without adding more pressures. The beauty of incorporating native plants is in the restoration of local biodiversity, to improve what already exists in a benign way that won’t overwhelm an existing harmony, being safe, not sorry. The wiki link has much more information and additional external links to dig a (w)hole lot deeper. The wider impacts can even affect national economies detrimentally. I wish that these same experts would re-evaluate the risks that vast swathes of monocultures have along the same criteria – basically they are the same thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species

And looking across the meadow through the window at the gathering of a large murder of crows on the grass, it seems the weather could be with us a while. Haha and a military chopper flies overhead, just what we need, I hope it doesn’t rattle any of the slates loose.

Rewild Yourself: 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible
Simon Barnes
ISBN 978-1-4711-7540-4