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Helen Moore
Helen is an author who has recently published her own nature diary
A cool westerly blowing. The afternoon sunshine tempted me out and I took a walk to Snail’s Bottom, noting the Elder in the hedgerow was starting to show its creamy flower buds - still very green as yet. The Ash trees had clusters of flower buds towards the tips of their branches; they looked extraordinary, like burgundy-coloured caviar encrusting the bark.
At the edge of Loocombe Woods, I found a scattering of Dog Violets (Viola canina) in bloom. This is the first time I remember ever finding them growing in the wild and I thought of the famous verse from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine.” Shakespeare is well-known for his intimate relationship with Nature, which adds great richness to his writing. From a modern perspective, I also find it interesting to explore the insight it provides into the pre-industrial landscape - the countryside of the 16th century. His verse conveys lushness and a profusion that I find myself searching for, at times in vain, while his descriptions and the common names he uses for plants can provoke intriguing questions: for example, what exactly is Eglantine? Extract from Changing Nature: Eco-Notes of a Digital Woman, GreenSeer Books) - a country diary for a changing climate. Comparing against The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1906), Helen examines how Nature has changed over the past century in response to global warming.
FFI: www.natures-words.co.uk or contact: greenseerbooks@gmail.com
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