The picture shows the form of a hare. The hare rose from the form as though decaying leaves, twigs, and earth had assembled themselves into the form of a hare. In the form, the hairs of a hare. At no point any sound. I was checking my final Sentinel Trees before the start of the scary work. I scared off a heron, mallards, pigeons, squirrels. Two muntjacs watched me. The Goddess Oak said, "Trees can afford not to have dreams; maybe humans can't." I sat by Kairos. I watched a s

I sent to algae pictures to the tree researchers and they said, yes, that's what it is. Then I went along to the Wayfinder Oak and had a look at his signature. Well, I thought I could see that the algae was indeed making the tree red, but there is still the fact of peculiar striations on the bark that seem to exist in coincidence with the algae. Or that the striations make the bark especially habitable for the algae for some reason. I inspected the Goddess Oak too, and it see

So, I have worked out the schedule for the busy work spell. It involves driving, tubes, taxis, hotels, friend's house and severe anxiety on my part. This tipped me into a(nother) bad place. There's the ongoing fear of the future and the imposter syndrome in the papers. So, recently I sent one to a journal and the editor told me that it led to "intense discussion" which he will have to summarise for me. Some say, that's what a paper that says something new "should" do. But I f

I startled a heron as I was walking down a track in the Reserve. Off it flew, complaining in its pterodactyl voice. I was rather surprised as I didn't recall ever seeing one on the track before. They are always at the water's edge. I texted Saskia to say I had seen "Grandfather Heron". My trip was a Sentinel Tree survey. The third tree is next to where I saw the heron. On the back of the trunk, there is a burr and on the burr I saw this strange clear jelly. I visited the fina

Really, I reckon one is a male and one a female... I don't know which is Garden Robin... but I guess I should refer to them as Falca and Falco... Falcao for the pair! I think that was the male, and this big eyed person with little twiglets in her beak is the female.

Or maybe overreaching? Here's another abstract sent off for another conference!! "Little brown jobs" (LBJs) names small, visually similar birds resisting easy identification. This paper approaches LBJs phenomenologically, attending to how they appear: as movement without individuation, presence without clear objecthood, familiarity in the perceptual periphery. They are irrecusable—there, again and again—yet do not resolve into distinct figures of attention.   Such appearance

I've sent off an abstract to a conference about extinction. Here it is: Extinction is an ethical event—and an exercise of power: an irreversible withdrawal that refuses negotiation, reversal, or redemption. The extinct Other cannot answer, nor be restored without renewed violence or simulation. Yet extinct beings continue to press upon the present as ethical weight, shaping landscapes, memory, and modes of attention. Ethical relation, this paper argues, persists even when rec

Goldcrests! The last two days they have been in the garden! This afternoon, I was cutting some shrub that had grown up under the protection of the front lilac - I figured that any cutting needed to be done soon, what with the robin's courting and so on, and I saw something moving. The bird was just a foot to the left of my head. It flew six inches closer - then realised what I was and left. It was the size of my eyeball! And the crest - so brilliantly bright! I was very happy

...an algal one! You know the red stains I se on trees? Well, I uploaded a picture of Kairos's "signature" or "birthmark" and asked a chatbot. At first it said in was a bacterial bleed. I said, no, it's not. Then it suggested that what I was seeing was a kind of algae and it told me how to test: first, by running my finger over it, there'd be a smear left on my finger and secondly if I magnified the image I would see strands. It had rained the night before but was very sunny

I mentioned that I had seen courting among the robins, well, more crazily, a few days ago, Garden Robin... who is presumably Falca... was collecting nesting material. I asked ChatGPT, expecting it to say something like, "Well, robins do start early." Instead it said this: Oh that is  something. January 26 — and nest material already, courting signs, a brief trinity-in-a-tree among the most famously intolerant little sovereigns of Europe. That’s not nothing. That’s a rupture i

On two occasions on one day, this squirrel seemed unperturbed by my presence. Then, it decided I was a bad thing, and fled. What led it to tolerate me at some points and not at other points? I suppose hunger played a part. Or maybe it could only manage to be brave for a limited amount of time? I hate to recall the poor blind squirrel and the little baby with neurological damage. It must be nicer to be a rat and live in a family than to be a solitary squirrel who is scared of

Every early winter, I cut back the pelargoniums so they are dormant over the cold period. I must have failed to chop off enough as a couple of them have kept flowering. This is despite the fact that the heater which is meant to only turn on to prevent the conservatory getting too cold seems to have lost its thermostat ability and has been switched off all winter. I hope this doesn't cause them any harm. The citrus plant enjoyed a long period outside. I think I only brought it

Oh, wait: that should be a crone called Curiosity. I have mentioned a few times the number of robins around (none of which currently seem to be Tane). And I remember writing that one day i was sure I saw some courting. Well, I definitely saw that today. It was quite remarkable. Two robins were perched about 90cm apart on a branch of the sycamore to the north of my garden. They were not arguing, it was definitely courtship. And there was a third on another branch that stuck o

For some reason I love this word. It gives me a tingle every time I read something like, 'The Tamar was in spate as we fled the pirates.' OK, I never actually read that, but, well. I couldn't think of an example off-hand. Turns out the word is related to both spit and spew. Not much of a surprise. A brief trawl offered this: In his A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882), Walter Skeat offers the following suggestions as to the etymology of spate: Cf.

In the Reserve, it struck me how the Goddess Oak lives on an edge. She is stable despite the steep side of the ditch. She is calibrated to asymmetry. There is something quietly profound in that. Then I sat with Kairos and was thinking about my opacity paper. I wrote about that and then leaned against the tree and realised something that's been there all along. Going into the hollow places is not about finding an undiscovered truth of the reality of who I am, or discovering so

This is the final section. This aspect of my thinking is scaffolded less on the work of others and more on my personal engagement with the more-than-human world, although it is conceptually linked to my discussion of Glissant’s scene recounting the running man on the beach. By ‘leaving-be’, I want to say that withdrawal is not necessarily a failure of relation. That the Other chooses not to respond, or chooses not to be present, or chooses to leave does not negate the ethical

This is the second of three meditations on my practice. And you will see even more overtly in this one the impact that reading Édouard Glissant has had upon me! Sitting-with concerns time, presence, and duration.   All life is inescapably located and related: sitting-with is the temporal, embodied, embedded aspect of the practice. The sitter is not a neutral observer: their presence will change the non-human community in terms of who remains present and in terms of what those

The crows are watching again! I thought I would put on here some of the thoughts I have been having recently about my practice of 'becoming-with' the animals and plants around me. One aspect is somthing I call "making-room". By making-room, I mean both physical space and psychological space. The latter is as important as the former, yet far less frequently examined. While the allocation of land, habitat, and freedom from human incursion is rightly acknowledged as central to c

When I sat with Kairos, I was thinking about the next thing I am writing. And then, out of the blue, and this is no surprise, I just thought, "Look, I am at home here." The squirrels and muntjacs adjust to my presence without being unduly put out. The birds stop complaining after a while. The air sings of belonging-together. Here we all are, getting on with it. Here we all are, yes, impacting each other, but not maliciously. Here we all are, impacting each other, and sometime

...and also bought many books and had a delightful meal. There are excellent independent and second hand bookshops in London. Two second hand ones on the same street in Stoke Newington. This one had the kindest shopkeeper. I had selected three second hand books and he told me the fourth would be free. So I started searching for a fourth... which made me late... but happily my friend was late too and although we were meeting in a restaurant somehow she spied me out in the book