Spring in Braidburn Valley Park

 We had a lovely walk around Braidburn Valley Park yesterday. 

We walked there via Morningside, passing through the grounds of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh's psychiatric hospital. The grounds of the hospital include a lot of greenspace, for the therepeutic value that such spaces offer for patients and are open to the public. There are a number of bright posters around the grounds mapping out the greenspaces.

Braidburn Valley Park isn't far from the hospital and runs alongside the Braid Burn.

The cherry trees are still in full bloom in the park and look wonderful

There were a good number of Orange Tip butterflies in the park, one of my favourite butterflies, the orange patches on the wings are so eye catching when the butterfly is in flight. 

After walking round the park, we then walked through Morningside Cemetery, which has quite a few Horse Chestnut trees, which are currently in full bloom

Edinburgh is lucky in having so many greenspaces that are well worth exploring! 

 

Exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery

 I've long admired the work of willow weaver Lizzie Farey so was particularly keen to get along to her show at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh's Dundas Street. Her work is being shown alongside several other artists and crafters.

The gallery takes up two floors of a Georgian Terrace in Edinburgh's famous New Town. These exhibitions pack a lot in, but nothing seems crowded. As well as Lizzie Farey's beautiful wall art (see an example here) and her sculptures (see an example here) highlights included wood fired pottery from Nancy Fuller, Still Life paintings from a range of artists including Ewan McClure and beautiful paintings of nature by Naoka Shibuya.

I was particularly interested in the way that both Lizzie Farey and Nancy Fuller work so closely with the natural environment. Lizzie uses willow harvested from her own willow field along with foraged pussy willow, larch, bog myrtle, reeds and rushes. Her wall art is inspired largely by plantlife and her sculptures all have a feeling of organic form. As she says herself on the gallery website: "Natural forms provide both the foundation and inspiration for my work". Nancy Fuller meanwhile works in a croft in Aberdeenshire, using traditional methods from Taiwan, her place of birth. 

The paintings by Ewan McClure in the exhibition are inspired by the work of the famous Scottish colourist S J Peploe, and in fact feature props used by Peploe himself as loaned to the artist by Peploe's grandson. 

Naoka Shibuya's paintings include beautifully rendered paintings of birds and plants, with interesting bits of abstract or unrelated detail brought in, but in a way that only adds to the overall effect. 

There are many other artists on display here, far too many to mention.  The current exhibitions run only until Friday 3 May then the gallery will be closed until a new group of exhibitions will start on 8 May. 

The gallery also has a lovely garden behind the building, which is only open when the weather is fine. It's a beautiful, peaceful space, sadly my photos below don't do it justice! 

It features corton steel sculptures by Andrea Geile, including the one below, A Wild Land

what I particularly liked about this piece is that, if you look closely, it seems to frame a lovely Wall-rue fern (Asplenium ruta-muraria)

 I then became fascinated by the tulips in the garden, some of which are starting to fade, but actually becoming particularly lovely 

Beautiful Bluebells and more in Dalkeith Country Park

 We always like to visit Dalkeith Country Park when the bluebells are in full bloom and we were very lucky with our trip yesterday. The bluebells were definitely at their best. 

as were a host of other Spring flowers, including Ramsons (Wild Garlic) 

(Wild Garlic is a favourite of foragers, to the extent that it is disappearing from many areas in the UK. If you do forage this plant, as with any other foraging, please do not uproot it and take only as many leaves as you need. Even better, forage Few Flowered Leek which is an invasive species, taking over from Wild Garlic in many places, but tastes just as good.

 The photo above shows Few Flowered Leek in bloom).

Other flowers in bloom included Wood Anemones 

 Wood Sorrel

Greater Stitchwort

and Lesser Celandine

Dalkeith Country Park is also rightly famous for its ancient oak trees

While we were walking around we were fascinated to find a group of solitary bees. There were two species here, one a larger species, a mining bee probably Andrena clarkella

and a smaller species of parasitic nomad bee (probably Nomada goodeniana)

The nomad bees were hanging around the nesting area of the mining bees, waiting for a chance to enter the nest holes. (Mining bees don't live in hives, but excavate individual nest holes where they lay their eggs, the parasitic bees then also lay their eggs in the same nest holes. There are usually a lot of nest holes of the same species in a small area, but the fact that each bee makes its own individual nest hole is why these species are known as solitary bees). 

The Running Hare by John Lewis Stempel

The Running Hare is a closely observed study of the wildlife of farmland. The author, having become disenchanted with conventional farming, takes on a field 'Flinders' with consent to farm it chemical free for a year to allow wildflowers to come back and in their turn to attract insects and the birds that feed on them.

The author has an intimate relationship with the land, a life as a farmer and an understanding of how farming can be carried out in harmony with nature, he talks about the importance of untidy corners where nature can be allowed to get on with its own thing. The book includes the author's memories of the farmland wildlife of years gone by (for example: Lapwings once being abundant in farmland, now all too rare a bird and Corncrakes in English farm fields in the 1970s, the Corncrake being a species now restricted to certain remote areas of Scotland.) We are given details of farming methods, close observations of weather and its effects on wildlife. Some of the writing is beautiful, such as the description of Starlings in winter "wearing Winter's starry night on their feathers" though sometimes the author tries too hard: "a mouse-shoal of House Sparrows" just doesn't work for me.

Modern farming methods have not been kind to wildlife, particularly the use of chemical herbicides and pesticides, which have been shown to have been responsible for the decline in species such as the Grey Partridge. Flinders Field is just one small part of the agricultural landscape of the area and not enough to make a large scale difference. A Skylark returns to the field but: 

"...it does not nest in the field of the rising corn. I guess its song fails to travel far enough for a mate to hear it".

We need more farmers to farm in true harmony with nature, but more than that, farmers need support from government to be able to farm in harmony with nature. 

The Running Hare by John Lewis Stempel, published (2016) by Doubleday. 

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 Right now is a pivotal moment for nature and farming. The UK Government is considering how to balance budgets ahead of its Comprehensive Spending Review in June. The farming budget – the biggest pot of funding for nature – is in the firing line. But any cut now would be a disaster for nature and farming. Please consider signing the RSPB's petition to protect funding for farming and nature here. 

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There's always so much to see in nature, particularly in Spring. My latest post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack blog outlines some of nature's highlights that can be seen in and around Edinburgh at this time of year. You can read it here. 

Cloudy Easter Monday

 We visited Lauriston Farm today, one of the sites I survey for butterflies. The weather hasn't been good enough to survey over the past week or so and, though we thought when we left the flat that the weather might just become good enough, it ultimately wasn't (too cold and overcast).

However, though we didn't see any butterflies, we were very impressed by the birds we saw and heard. I was particularly happy to see Meadow Pipits, not an uncommon bird, but one I rarely see. Two of them were chasing each other round the fields and then one of them flew right up into the air singing then flew down again onto the fence. The Meadow Pipit is well known for this song flight and is not to be confused with the superficially similar looking Skylark, which stays up in the air, singing for long periods of time. We also saw the first Swallows of the year and a small group of Linnets.

The Hawthorn is starting to come into bloom, always a lovely sight at this time of year. 

Cherry Blossoms at Lauriston Castle

 Every year we visit Lauriston Castle at around this time to enjoy the cherry blossom in the Japanese Garden. The trees were just about at their best when we visited yesterday. Here are some photos. 

 

There are plenty of other things to admire at this time of year too. The Weeping Willow by the pond in the Japanese Garden is lovely

as are the Pieris bushes

 Bluebells are in bloom in the grounds of the castle too

and the Norway Maple trees are in bloom 

Hopefully the cherry trees will still be fully in bloom for next week's Sakura Festival at the castle. 

 

haiku

warming seas—
coral reefs weep
with algae

originally published in cattails.  

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read updates on the state of Australia's Great Barrier Reef here.