Mid-month Catch-up? Yes, we’re already over halfway through June, and the longest day (northern hemisphere) is fast approaching. Several other deadlines are already here, so I don’t know what I’ve been doing since the end of May… oh yes, #30DaysWild!

Random Acts of Wildness

Every day Wild?

The last update was two weeks ago, when I left you admiring Gilbert White’s Garden and my long-awaited bug hotel.

Since then I have done something wild every day, albeit some of it was discussing carbon emissions reduction, which I reckon counts. More Random Acts of Wildness include:

  • sowing the wildflower seeds I bought at GW’s garden: corn-cockle (which have already sprouted), columbine, angelica, red campion and turk’s cap (martagon) lily. That needs two periods of cold to germinate, so is in a separate place and I might put it in the fridge before winter comes to fool it.
  • doing a sound map of noises from my garden (see below – the central D angled is my chair)
  • gazing at some lovely clouds (see below)
  • hedgehog spotting (see below: he manages to squeeze through the ground feeder okay, and there’s a smaller hedgehog visiting, too)
  • baby bird counting in my garden — up to sixteen starlings, eight blue tits, four robins, and eight more great tits. The blackbirds and thrushes are being very active with their food collection too.
  • making hay (does that count? It reduces the grass height for the wildflowers…)

I’ve done two pieces of nature writing: The Beach (non-fiction) and Tunnel, both for #writephoto. I considered tsunamis for the WEP Flash Fiction, but settled on a different story for that!

Reading wild

I’ve been having trouble with my reading and getting very wild about some of the storylines in novels. Well, not so much the storylines as the way the story cuts about, back and forth, and puts the characters through incredibly painful emotional and mental health dramas. I’ve given up on three books this month. I suspect it is post-covid (if we are post). The publishers have been getting the terribly suspenseful and agonising books out on their schedules, and frankly, I reckon a lot of readers aren’t going to be up to reading them, not just me.

As a result, mid-month I formally dumped two of my Net-Galley reads with apologies to the publishers and an explanation of why, and am considering doing the same with another — an author I’ve read before and loved.

Instead I’ve been turning to wild reads. Two are space books, and mainly show off spectacular photos. The other is a biography with detailed discussion of tree ecosystems. You can look forward to one space review and the biography in the next couple of weeks.

Is anyone else finding themselves unable to cope with these distressing storylines?

Finding a mid-month haven

This week I spent a day (well, an afternoon by the time I got there) at Titchfield Haven Nature Reserve. Just watching birds and dragonflies. It was lovely. Refreshing for the soul. I came home and finished publishing the last of the four flash fiction collections, and booking myself onto a craft & gift fair circuit. That led to a whole lot more on the list of promotional activity!

Enough Already

How much transport growth is enough? It’s enough already!

That was one of the best messages that came out of an online conference I attended last week. It was excellent, but the announcement of it being on ‘in the flesh’ next year gave us food for thought. As an energy efficiency and carbon reduction conference, we feel we should be showing the way for the ‘new normal’. It was great to catch-up with my old friends, many of whom I’ve worked with – but often only after I met them at this conference in the past.

I had a long conversation with someone post-conference about what we should do, and push for, to show the rest of the world how we can do conferences without carbon emissions. We’ve been trying, for a while. We really just need to take real action, and include some of those really difficult questions. It all comes down to cost — or the cost of saving the planet.

I really must build more of this into my writing. But I think I really did do something wild or climate related every day since the last catch-up.

Watch out for part 2 of the Great Plastics Project next Wednesday.

#30DaysWild – Mid-month Catch-up: hedgehogs, beaches, wildlife havens, sound maps, and getting wild about books. Enough Already! #climatechange Share on X

#30DaysWild – Mid-month Catch-up

3 thoughts on “#30DaysWild – Mid-month Catch-up

  • 18 June, 2021 at 8:58 pm
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    Interesting, that sound map. Because of our patio and feeder, I think all the bird sounds would be right next to it! I haven’t seen any baby birds this year – but with all the construction and noise going on around here, I am not surprised. Turtles we have – they tend to migrate around the neighborhood at night.

  • 19 June, 2021 at 4:39 am
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    I have definitely been avoiding distressing storylines—and finding things distressing that shouldn’t be.

    • 19 June, 2021 at 1:09 pm
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      I’m thinking of making my IWSG post for July about this, and seeing what people think generally

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