Weeknotes: Befriending and valuing trees beyond money, being embodied

I have some really exciting nature writing news that I can’t share yet. I’ll tell you in a couple of weeks. Cliffhanger…! Urban Tree Festival highlights, some of my fave bits 9 days of glorious tree nerdery. I participated in 27 hours of the Urban Tree Festival, including 2.5 hours of tree meditations (15 minutes […]

Weeknotes: Heavenly intersection between trees and writing, pure delight

Nerding out about trees The Urban Tree Festival came at just the right time. 9 days of intensely pleasurable tree nerdery when I have a schedule that’s flexible enough to take full advantage of it. I don’t want the Urban Tree Festival to end. But it will. When it does, I’m intending to nerd out […]

How to learn about trees: Lessons from an enthusiast

On developing tree nerdery Hang out with trees and naturalists. Learn from folks who know more than you do Spend quiet/quality time in the woods. Practise being comfortable in nature. Observe. Use your senses to learn more. Make it social: Invite your friends to wander in woods with you. Make new friends amongst tree enthusiasts. […]

The week that started 7th September 2020

Learning to look after myself better So, I participated in training for Building Resilience and Finding Balance, by work’s internal learning & development team and Brooklyn Minds, respectively. Some of the things I learned/re-learned: I already have resilience. Becoming (more) resilient is about boosting existing skills, as well as building new ones. Hobbies that are […]

The week that started 4th May 2020

tl;dr: Savouring for happiness, poetry (especially Mary Oliver’s), black speculative fiction and sci-fi, flowers upon flowers, drawing & learning the names of trees in German, being inspired and encouraged to draw by my workmates, tree geekery, short stories (esp. Tove Jansson’s), psychology of happiness (specifically The Science of Wellbeing, it’s amazing, do the free course) […]

The week that started 27th April 2020

Cheap stationery So, The Science of Wellbeing reminding me that stuff is inherently disappointing, despite what our biased intuitions tell us, helped me kick my expensive stationery cravings. So, I switched from Ryman’s and Paperchase to The Works. As a result, I learned about this innovation – paper you can write on underwater, and it […]

The week that started 3rd February 2020

Botany After my first introduction to botany lesson at the weekend, I recapped what I learned. Monocotyledons Dicotyledons alliums, e.g. garliccereals, e.g. rice, quinoa, cornbutcher’s broom pretty much everything else I saw a photo of the widest tree in the UK, a yew in Stafforshire at Shugborough Hall. And I saw that holly bark has […]