This year I am going to do what I can to spend quality time outside every day. I will try to illustrate this blog with relevant pictures. But I also acknowledge that, often, I have the dog with me when I am out, and trying to look for a good image whilst holding a lead means that I don’t see everything else around me. So if there isn’t an illustration – I’m sorry!

Many of my walks are on a 30 minute circuit from my front door, which includes the same stretch of canal path each day. The changes from day to day give me as much pleasure as the reassurance I find in what doesn’t change. So, here we go…

8.45am start – late, it’s a holiday.  A grey day, but dry. Turning on to the canal path there are the usual pigeons everywhere. One sits at the top of a tree, as if trying to look like something more interesting – a kestrel, maybe.  Others sit hunched and fluffed out, rows of sullen would-be passengers waiting to board the bus that doesn’t come.

A jay screeches and flys across the path. On the canal the swan family – two adults and two juveniles with white-brown feathers – drift around a boat in hope of scraps. A single magpie in a tree. A single swan along the river.

At the lock, there is a pair  of mallards sitting on the landing stage, Canada Geese, 3 and 2, and a couple of black-headed gulls on the water. Many more gulls sit along the ridge of nearby houses. Suddenly they all rise up and land on the water – to drink? – without any obvious signal. Then return to their watching point.

Along the return path are mainly garden birds: blackbirds, blue tits, a wren. Canada Geese fly over.

And, turning home, the heron, not in his usual place, standing by the run-off from the canal to the river, but hoping for fish at the end of the canal. A good way to end.

A day of varied weather: cool and dry  changing to cold, wet and windy. Hardly typical June weather.

I started the day with a meeting at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, looking at part of the amazing entomology collection.

Then back to work, via a quick check on our resident mallard. We think she is sitting on 5 eggs in the middle of a newish border. The thick bark mulch obviously attracted her, and she is amazingly difficult to see once settled.

After work, the weather has turned and I wander around the small garden square opposite the house: a luminous philadelphus is in full flower, but it is almost dark already and the only other flowering plants are less dramatic and need sunlight to be seen at their best.  The grass is covered with small – and not so small – twigs, and the tips of small branches. Seeds which are still bright green and far from ready to germinate have been ripped from sycamore and lime.

So, day 5, brings the warmth and springlike cheerfulness of a sitting duck but ends with unseasonably cold and wet windy weather.

Today was a day when I probably needed to be outside, and connected to the good things in life, more than ever, but I have hardly set foot out of the house. That was a mistake. So tomorrow I am going to put nature first and make sure I really do manage to do something wild.

 

For today I’m afraid the best I can do is share some pictures of evening light, which seems to promise better things tomorrow.

Today I have mostly been looking at colours and shapes.

The whites and pinks of the cornflower and peony, the cream and yellow of the rose and euphorbia, the extraordinary sculptural leaf shape and then the iris….

This iris is completely amazing. The colours are muted. The structure makes it possible for a bee to disappear completely inside. Tomorrow’s challenge is to try to capture that moment.

Today Rosie-dog and I walked the canal loop in reverse, with David to take the lead (dog-lead, that is) when there was the chance of capturing an image.

Yesterday the willow fluff was really flying – today it lay on the surface of the water.

 

Swarms of flies were visible just above the water, attracting large fish, turning circles just below the surface, and only identifiable because of the ripples.

 

But the reflection of the bridge and the colours of the irises were not in any way diminished:

 

Like The Farm Upon the Hill, I cannot believe that it is a year since I challenged myself to write a blog every day for 30 days. I managed it then. Will I manage it again?

Last year I was Kent based. This year I’m living in the centre of Oxford. I am completely surrounded by nature, from the wrens, robins, pigeons, blackbirds, blue tits and blackcaps of the garden, to the geese, ducks and occasional kingfisher by the canal; from the gulls in the University Parks to the mallard nesting in our new College border. But time to appreciate all this life is pretty limited. Unlike last year when my time was my own, I instinctively feel guilty if I stop to watch the bees or try to photograph the light on the water, or capture the vivid yellow of the irises. This guilt must go!

Today started pretty well: a 30 minute canal walk with Rosie-dog, avoiding the geese – of which I am unreasonably afraid – and managing to miss the tail-twitching cat that dared her to give chase. Irises are almost going over, but the elderflower has not yet reached its full glory. The canal-dwellers have planted all kinds of mini-gardens alongside their boats and every now and then a blast of honeysuckle or rose catches my attention. No sign of the resident heron, with its blue-black cap, but ducks galore and the usual birdsong. A beautiful morning that remained fresh but with the unmistakable promise of heat later on in the day.

So, shall I take the same route tomorrow, or head in a different direction? That will depend, once more, on time – and as today is already tomorrow, I fear I may have to stick to the tried and tested loop….

Today is all about fruits and flowers. We have passed mid-summer’s day and seem to be preparing for autumn – without, perhaps, having enjoyed the long hot days of summer themselves.

Walking today I have found cherries, blackberries, apples and elder berries setting, along with seeds of sycamore and lime:

Looking around my garden, I had been inclined to say that not many plants were flowering: but when I really went looking that was clearly not true.

I have looked at everything – birds, animals, insects, plants – so much more clearly over the past 30 days. I hope I will be able to keep looking at them in that way once June is over!

Another of those days when I fall back on the station platforms as a source of wildness whilst travelling to and fro.

And here we have (for the second time this month, but in a different location) a lavender beetle:

Actually, there are several beetles on this clump of lavender but only one was prepared to stay still and be photographed.

And if you’d like a little more detail, here is one (or, rather, two, if we’re talking beetles) I posted earlier – on Day 19, to be precise:

 

It’s really all about the frogs!

Having heard, I thought, a frog jumping into the water when I was tackling the pond, today I have hard evidence that they are back:

And not just one, but two:

They’re quite different, and one is much larger than the other.

Now I know this will sound ridiculous, but the presence or otherwise of frogs in my little plastic pond has always been a touchstone for me as to whether or not my garden was working as a wildlife friendly environment.  I have been sad not to have seen them for a while. And today is therefore a very good day.