Patchwork Days

I first learnt to cut and stitch patchwork sitting on the living room floor of family friend Barbara Thompson. Walking into her house, there was always the aroma of cooking spices, books, wool. The walls were covered in bookshelves, almost as though her house was built with stories, not bricks, and the books that didn't fit …

Unpackaging Life

It's been a bit quiet on the blog these last few weeks. I've been struggling to write about the tiny, small efforts we are making at home, because I haven't felt particularly inspired by them, in the great whirl of Extinction Rebellion protests, and the darkening knowledge of what is happening across the planet. The …

Winter Healing From The Elder Mother

When I first moved into the house I live in now, there was an elder sapling in my back garden, brought by birds, and shooting up rebelliously between honeysuckle and philadelphus. The garden was very different then - with only two previous owners, both strong independent women who loved to garden,  it had neat hedges, …

The Boy With The Lead Balloon, and The Girl Who Wouldn’t Fly…

Today we walked in the woods. Two buses from home, across the River in the Derwent Valley, under a grim, threatening sky we walked in the woods. We saw a deer, chatted to some rescue horses, tracked prints along the muddy path and paddled in a river full of all of yesterday's torrential rain. We …

Sleepwalking into Ecocide.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I found myself deeply connected with stories of the Holocaust. I read all I could about it, I watched TV shows about it, I found poetry and art that spoke to me of the horrors that could never, ever be allowed to happen again. When …

Skill Sharing to Save The Planet

It's been a few weeks since I last put pen to paper here and that's because I've been busy creating a set of workshops, in partnership with The Paddock, to further the idea of sharing zero waste skills and the know-how of making plastic free alternatives with others. My workshops will be running on Wednesdays …

A Charm of Bees To Tell Our Tales.

The summer that I turned 6 there were bees living under the floor of the wooden garage in the back garden of the house I grew up in. I can remember it so clearly. It was a proper, old fashioned garage, that would never been big enough for a modern car, but might have had …

Climate Cacophony (And Why We Must Find The Harmonies)

I've been sitting looking at an empty screen for an hour, listening to the same song on repeat (Groceries: Mallrat, since you ask), pondering this post, and wondering how to begin it. The girls and I  had a long, blissfully exhausting day yesterday out by the river and among the trees with lovely friends. A …

Rock, Water, Tree. (For Our Children, And Their Earth.)

"People gonna rise like water, and turn this system round. In the voice of my great grand-daughter, climate justice now" From the phoenix-like flames of Notre Dame, to the sound of hundreds of people joining in a traditional Scottish mourning song on the streets of London, and from hearing Greta Thunberg address the crowds at …

Taking The Streets to Save the World

The planet we spend our days walking on, living and breathing on, caring for our children on, is currently, right now, in the throes of a 6th mass extinction. The last mass extinction was 66 million years ago, and saw the end of the age of the dinosaurs, with 75% of all plant and animal …