Down to the River and Up to the Trees: Discover the hidden nature on your doorstep. Sue Belfrage
any clues to the place’s past such as place names or particular features, and how it appears today.
For millennia, people have woven grass and reeds into baskets and matting. Dried grass smells sweet as a summer memory, and leisurely weaving it into cord can make for a simple yet practical keepsake.
To make the cord, pick eight or so strands of dried grass – or thin strands of creeper such as wild clematis – which are about 45 cm (18 in) long. If the material seems too dry and brittle to weave, soak it in water for about ten minutes. Then divide it into two hanks. Knot the hanks together at one end, keeping them separate. Pinch the top hank of grass between your finger and thumb and twist it tightly away from you three times with a little movement, like winding a clock; then take the bottom hank and weave this up behind the twisted hank towards you to sit at the top instead. (Like plaiting, it’s much easier to do than it sounds.)
Keep repeating the process, twisting the hank on top three times, then weaving the hank underneath so that it sits at the top. If you like, thread on beads. If you run out of grass, you can splice in more until you reach the length you want. Tie a knot in the end and you’re done.
While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, I came across a copy of The Language of Flowers or Flora Symbolica from 1887. I bought it and took it home, where I discovered scores of dried flowers and leaves pressed within its pages like antique bookmarks. Wonderful to think they might have survived for more than 130 years.
To dry your own flowers, ferns and leaves, pick them fresh in the morning once the dew has evaporated. (Please don’t pull up any wild flowers by the roots, or pick any endangered plants.) Flowers with flat faces such as violets work well, as do buttercups, daisies and wild grasses.
Place the freshly picked flowers between two sheets of white paper and put this inside a heavy book, such as a dictionary. Moisture from the flowers might make the pages wrinkle, so use a book you don’t mind damaging and, if drying multiple flowers, space them out inside. Close the book and put a weight or a pile of other books on top to keep the pages flat. Then leave this in a dry, cool place for a couple of weeks.
You could use them in a bespoke bookmark or a card along with a note of when and where you picked them.
The Aboriginal people of Australia navigate their land through age-old songlines or dreaming tracks, mythological paths whose sacred landmarks are recorded in song. This means that if you know the rhythm of the song, you know the land. While not the same thing, Alfred Watkins came up with the term ‘ley line’ in 1921 to describe the straight tracks that supposedly link ancient sites in Britain. These ley lines, in turn, came to be associated with mystical energy pathways.
Pilgrims, of course, walk to their holy destinations. Is there perhaps a quality about walking itself that invokes a sense of the sacred, with the rhythm of the feet, the thumping of the heart, the looseness of the limbs?
Create a connected walk of your own. Choose two spots some distance apart that appeal or seem significant to you in some way. Walk between them in as straight a line as you can, while keeping to permitted rights of way. Make a mental note on your journey of what you see and any landmarks along the way. Listen to your footsteps. Perhaps you will be inspired to craft a song of your own?
While there are weeds such as hemlock and poison ivy that you wouldn’t welcome into your living space, others can bring benefits. Some weeds help check soil erosion and add organic matter and nutrients to the soil, while others with long roots can help break up compacted ground – the weed equivalent of earthworms.
The shrub buddleia can seed itself, weed-like, in wasteland, and is known as the butterfly bush for good reason. In summer, buddleia can become a fluttering heaven of butterfly wings as the insects flit about, sipping on the flowers. Even ivy, often ripped off walls and trees, is an important food supply for honeybees and birds in the autumn because of its late flowering season and calorie-rich berries.
If washed and prepared, weeds can be nutritious for human beings too. Add hot (not boiling) water to cleavers, also known as goose grass, for a medicinal cup of herbal tea that’s good for the digestive system. Or make yourself a salad from young dandelion leaves or chickweed, with its tiny white flowers. For a hot dish, sauté nettles, chickweed or sorrel with a little garlic and olive oil, and serve with a drizzle of lemon.
‘A weed is but an unloved flower.’
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (1850–1919), ‘The Weed’
While it might not always seem like it on an overcast day, nature is bursting with colour. Even if you look closely at a cloud, you will notice different hues – pale pinks and lilacs, or steely blues. We are surrounded by colour even in the most built-up of spaces, from the pearlescent shimmer of a pigeon’s neck to the startling yellow sunbursts of dandelions growing in the pavement cracks. How many different shades of green, for instance, do you notice once you really start to look?
To open your artist’s eye, choose a colour for the day and make a mental note each time you spot it. Colours serve many functions in the natural world, such as camouflage and protection, as well as enticement for pollination or attracting mates, and they also tend to evoke particular cultural meanings.
If you feel inspired by what you see, sketch something that captures colour; it could be orange lichen on a rock, the pink inside a shell or rough brown crumbling wood – whatever catches your eye.
What does colour mean to you?
‘Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.’
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882), Nature, Addresses and Lectures
Rather poetically, the sky is known in astronomy as the celestial sphere or celestial dome. In a way, it protects life on Earth rather like a gardener’s glass cloche shields plants, creating the perfect conditions for them to grow. As well as sheltering us, the sky is a constant reminder of the great potential that surrounds us – the immense universe with its billions of heavenly bodies, from meteorites to planets. Our Sun is but one star among many.
The sky invites us to look up and face the horizon – from witnessing dawn and dusk, to reading the phases of the Moon. While we cannot control the weather, we can learn to meet it with equanimity and benefit from whatever it might bring, sunshine or showers. For who knows what wonders will arrive upon the wind?