Showing results for "The Diary" in Outdoors & Nature

A Londoner for more than 20 years, moving from flat to Tube to air-conditioned office, Melissa Harrison knew what it was to be insulated from the seasons. Adopting a dog and going on daily walks helped reconnect her with the cycle of the year and the quiet richness of nature all around her: swifts nesting in a nearby church; ivy-leaved toadflax growing out of brick walls; the first blackbird's song; an exhilarating glimpse of a hobby over Tooting Common.

Dorothy Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1771, being one year younger than her brother William. After their mother died in 1778, they were separated and did not return to the Lake District until 1794, when they spent two happy months walking around the hills near Keswick, eventually settling down at Grasmere in 1799. The journals that Dorothy kept are remarkable for the detailed observations she makes of the surrounding countryside and people, often providing glimpses of poverty and suffering, as well as displaying her complete love affair with nature.

It is the Winter Solstice and Sarah Sands is sitting by her father's bedside, bracing herself for loss. What her father needs to do, she thinks, is conserve his energy - to hibernate like a hedgehog. When the hedgehog curls up in its bed of leaves, its heart rate slows, its body temperature drops and for months there it remains, hardly breathing at all. A few days earlier, Sarah and her grandson had found a poorly hedgehog in the garden and taken it to the local hedgehog sanctuary. They named her Peggy, and her fate had become a matter of pressing concern.

Two Shakes of a Lamb's Tail is the funny, illuminating diary of a year in the life of a New Zealand farm vet With a husband and two children, 1200 sheep and 400 cattle, farm dogs and pet lambs, pigs bent on excavation and a goat bent on escape, country life is never dull. From calving cows to...

Mark Seth Lender’s home is on the edge of a salt marsh. From his front porch and back yard he is witness to an astonishing array of wildlife, but nothing he sees is more beautiful and inspiring than the birds that fill the air, perch on trees and wade in shallow water. His reports on the sighting of birds like great horned owls, little blue herons and snowy egrets are featured in the segment "Salt Marsh Diary" heard on NPR’s Living on Earth. For the first time, he has chronicled the marsh’s life in a book penned from his perch.

As the celebrated author of Akenfield, Ronald Blythe, turns 100 this year, Next to Nature brings together a seasonal collection from the very best of a lifetime of writing. Ronald Blythe lives at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the...

‘An extraordinary treasure trove’ Andrew Marr A unique collection of unpublished letters from the climbing legend George Mallory to his family, revealing his innermost thoughts about people, places and mountains. On the 8th of June, 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were seen through a...

Nature took on a new importance for thousands of people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Britain, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of hope and renewal, and furthermore, in an extraordinary conjunction, the spring of 2020 turned out to be the loveliest spring ever recorded in Britain. Three nature writers, living like everyone else under lockdown, but walking out each day to exercise, resolved to record their experiences of the coronavirus spring, in widely contrasting parts of the country.

Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the Cornish Coast and the people who make their livings there, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination. ‘A beautiful portrait of lives shaped by the swell of...

In Tales from the Farm by the Yorkshire Shepherdess, Amanda takes listeners on an evocative journey to Ravenseat, where she lives with husband Clive and their nine children, not to mention their flock of sheep, herd of cows, hardworking dogs and a formidable chicken called Linda.