Writing a poem is another way to become more aware of nature. choose a favorite place to sit for a few minutes watching and enjoying. Notice how each sound, movement, texture and colour is different. Feel the special quality that each thing expresses. if you see a darting swift-moving flock of birds feel in your heart the joy of their flight. if you see a tree swaying in a light breeze, feel it’s strength and gracefulness. Try one of the following forms of poetry, or any other style you like
Verticle Poem
Choose a word that captures the feeling of the place you’ve chosen. Then use each letter of the word to begin a line of your poem. While walking on Mount Subasio near Assisi, Italy, I wrote a poem to the word ‘Spring’ the flower covered hillsides expressed a feeling of excitement as the shadows of the clouds raced over them.
S un-made cloud shadows
P laced on the earth
R unning across its surface
I n and out of the sun i sit
N ot long does the cloud’s twin stay
G oing, going on its way.
Haiku
Japanese Haiku is a form of poetry with only three lines. The first line contains five syllables the second has seven and the third has five again. Look for the syllables in the Haiku poem below.
In the sudden burst
Of summer rain… wind-blown birds
Clutching at grasses
Also, in Haiku poetry, the first two lines describe the scene and the third line expresses surprise or discovery. The two poems below are by Basho, A famous master of Haiku.
An old silent pond
Into the pond a frog jumps,
Splash! silence again.
Basho
My eyes following
Until a bird was lost at sea,
Found a small island.
Basho
Check out one of my favorite modern poets John Cooper Clarke and have fun writing poetry. feel free to share some you have created!
There are few plants that we all inherently know and usually have a negative experience with. The nettle, or stinging nettle to be precise. There are six subspecies of nettle five of which produce small stinging hairs that we are so familiar with and have negative childhood memories of.
Nettles get a bad press for the most part and hopefully this post can go some way to reconnecting people with an amazing plant.
Firstly let us look at how to handle the nettle.
The nettle has, as we are all familiar with, stinging hairs called trichomes that inject histamine and formic acid into the skin of animals causing irritation and swelling.
If we want to gather stinging nettles to use for any of the reasons below we need to navigate around getting stung if we can help it. The best and easiest method is to use thick gloves to pick and strip the nettles. Failing that we need to look closer at how the needles form…
The stinging needles are only on the topside and the stem of the plant. At they lie away from the stem. Meaning that if you are careful and stroke the leaf from the stem to the tip of the leaf you won’t get stung. If you did this in the opposite direction the needles will be able to jab into you.
You can collect leaves with bare hands by grasping the underside of the leaf, where there are no stinging needles and folding in half lengthways. Making sure that the top side of the leaf is on the inside of the fold. You can then pluck the leaf safely.
Stripping the leaves off of the whole stem. Use gloves ideally, but generally a firm grasp of the stem and run you hand from the base of the plant to the top of the plant avoids the majority of the stingers allowing you to work with the stem.
Many folk remedies exist to treat the effect of a sting including dandelion, horsetail, and using a leaf from the Dock plant, the dock contains a source of antihistamine helping to reduce swelling and pain.
Where to find it?
Anywhere where humans have had an impact on the environment. Nettles like nitrate rich soil. So anywhere where humans interact with the soil, farms, gardens, allotments, parks etc. you are likely to find nettles.
Uses
Ok so we know how to collect the plant what can it be used for?
Food
Nettles are a great source of nutrients packed full of vitamin C, once cooked the chemicals that cause the sting are neutralised and can safely be eaten. Treat them like spring greens or, my favorite, blitz them up into a nettle pesto. A great recipe for nettle pesto can be found on the river cottage website.
Drunk as a tea, place a handful of fresh nettle leaves into some boiling water and let steep for a refreshing tea.
Nettles are rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, manganese and calcium.
String
Once the leaves are separated from the stem the stem can be split and rolled into nettle string, without any processing of the fibers, resulting in a string which is surprisingly strong.
Wildlife diversity
Nettles are the exclusive food plant for several species of butterflies, like the tortoiseshell and peacock and is a food plant for many moths, including mouse moth, setaceous, Hebrew character, and angle shades, buff ermine, dot moth, the flame and the gothic.
Dye
During the second world war children were asked to collect nettles to make a dark green dye for camouflage. Green dye is surprisingly hard to comeby in nature because the green of nature is usually chlorophyll.
Keeping warm
Not one I would recommend trying, but the Romans, who, by the way, are believed to have introduced the nettle to Britain in the first place. Would flog themselves with nettles to help keep warm, especially in our cold northern territories.
Back pain and arthritis
Egyptians would use nettles as a herbal remedy to relieve the symptoms of back pain and arthritis.
Composting
Add netles to your compost heap as they are considered a composting accelerator. They are great for creating a liquid fertilizer if you leave them in water for a few weeks.
Basically, the ostracised nettle has had a bad press thanks to our own childhood experiences. But delve a little deeper and they make a fantastic addition to our lives and a tasty one at that. There are lots of things nettles can be used for so the next time you come across these fantastic plants, pause and take a moment to appreciate them in their entirety.
‘Looks like it’s going to rain, you should take a brolly’…
I believe that most people can subconsciously, and to some extent consciously, feel the change in the atmosphere as the sun closes its eyes and the dark clouds obscure it in the sky. The impending rain storm is coming.
Can we better predict what’s going to happen in the skies based on what we can see now? To answer that question we must first remind ourselves of the basics of clouds and what causes them to form in the first place.
What are clouds?
Clouds are the formation of water vapor that as it rises expands and cools. It then condenses to form what we see as clouds.
Each water droplet can vary in size from 1 – 100 microns (a human hair is 75 microns across) so very very small. That said the combined weight of all those water droplets means the average cumulus cloud weighs in at a whopping 1 million tonnes approximately. So how does it stay aloft i hear you ask? Well, the density of a cloud is around 1.003kg per m3 which makes it 0.4% lower than the surrounding air, making the cloud lighter allowing it to float.
What makes it rain?
The tiny water droplets float around in the cloud and bump into each other sticking to each other, something we call cohesion. All this cohesion makes the water droplets larger and this means they are less able to fight the pull of gravity and when the pull is too much, they fall from the sky, creating rain. Rain drops can vary in mass from drizzle at 0.004mg and the largest during a storm at 300mg.
What are the different types of clouds?
Clouds can be arranged into 3 broad categories, high, middle and low altitude clouds. High clouds form between 16000 and 43000 ft. Middle clouds form 6500 and 23000 ft and low clouds form below 6500 ft.
Now I’m not usually a fan of Latin names for objects when someone is trying to learn something new. After all the Maasai tribe of Kenya and northern Tanzania don’t know the latin names for all the animals and plants but have an exceptional knowledge of plants and wildlife that would put most of us to shame. In this case there aren’t really any common names for clouds so latin it is! It does not take too long to learn and actually follows a fairly straightforward pattern.
High level clouds are formed mainly of ice crystals due to the temperature and altitude in which they form. You can tell if the clouds are high altitude clouds as they do not obscure the sun (or make it opaque).
Cirrus – Means a ringlet or tuft.
Cirrostratus – Stratus means to flatten out or to be covered with a layer.
Cirrocumulus – Cumulus means accumulation or a heap/pile.
Middle level clouds are made up of water and sometimes, if it’s cold enough, ice. They quite often block out sunlight, but this is not a hard and fast rule.
Altostratus – Alto means height or upper air.
Altocumulus – Cumulus means accumulation or a heap/pile.
Low level clouds clouds tend to contain water, but can also be comprised of snow if the weather gets cold enough. Low clouds always block out sunlight.
Stratus – Saddle or Layer.
Stratocumulus – A layer of cumulus.
Nimbostratus – Nimbus means dark cloud or rain.
Cumulus – Accumulation.
Cumulonimbus – An accumulation of rain.
Right Latin lesson over, it’s all well and good knowing the name for something but what could it or does it mean? It’s really important to give name knowledge a purpose or what’s the point in learning the names for things?
Cirrus – is the most common high altitude cloud it is a sign of fair and pleasant weather to come.
Cirrostratus – A thin sheet like cloud that can cover the entire sky. It can be used to predict rain or snow if it’s cold enough within the next 12 – 24 hours.
Cirrocumulus – This cloud like the cirrostratus is a layer but differs because of its patchy appearance. When you see this cloud, it means that the weather is stable for now however it could be a prelude to stormy skies. If this cloud does precipitate it is rare that the droplets will reach the surface.
Altostratus – Forms ahead of a warm or occluded front. A warm front means light rain or snow and an occluded front is where a cold front and warm front have caught up with each other, joined together, which can cause strong winds and heavy rain. As the front passes Altostratus deepens and becomes Nimbostratus. Seeing this cloud can be an indicator that the weather is going to change for the worse.
Altocumulus – This cloud brings settled weather. If it does produce rain it is unlikely that the rain will reach the surface.
Stratus – If the weather is warmer it brings rain if it’s colder then it will bring snow. A low level grey blanket cloud that can sometimes be seen as fog.
Stratocumulus – Rarely produces rain. This cloud is usually seen at the tail end of bad weather, however can be a prelude to worse weather approaching.
Nimbostratus – Dark, low uniformly grey clouds. Widespread light to moderate precipitation. If you can see this one it’s probably already raining.
Cumulus – Fair weather cloud. A rounded top and a flat bottom this cloud means that it’s all going to be ok. However, this cloud can sometimes develop into Cumulonimbus which means you should probably think about heading indoors.
Cumulonimbus – Towering bad weather cloud with extreme weather, torrential rain, hail, lightning, but short lived so it’s not all that bad…
Using clouds to predict the weather is such an accessible activity to all people, you can even stay indoors or in your office if you like. Look out of the window, decide what type of cloud it is and see if your weather prediction comes true.
There are of course many types of clouds that fall in between these types and each can be affected by additional factors, temperature, wind direction and strength, atmospheric pressure. This article is designed to be a starting block for you to take some knowledge and develop it further.
If you want more information or have a question that needs answering. Please get in touch via social media or the website.
