Beauty All Around

We're surrounded by beauty if we only keep our eyes open

There’s so much awful stuff going on these days that it can be easy to become downhearted. I try not to let the news overwhelm me and I find that noticing all the small beauties around me can help me feel more cheerful. My eyes and ears are constantly alert for nature, including the flowers that grow through the cracks in the pavement or on walls. The City of Edinburgh council is becoming more relaxed about so-called weeds (in many cases they are no longer using herbicides) so parts of the city are blooming with flowers like this Ivy Leaved Toadflax

Ivy leaved Toadflax growing on a wall

The blackbirds this year have been singing almost everywhere in the city, being present in substantial numbers after several years of decline (probably thanks to last year’s wet Spring being favourable for their favourite food of earthworms). It’s been lovely to be serenaded by their lovely songs on so many of my walks around town. At this time of year, I always keep an eye out for Swifts, the most aerobatic of birds, which nest in our local area, though there are fewer then there used to be. (We put up nestboxes for them a couple of years ago, but so far these haven’t been occupied.) Another local sight at this time of year is, most years, a nesting pair of Lesser Black Backed Gulls on the roof opposite our flat. The chicks are very entertaining to watch once they get big enough to see from our windows.

I love the unexpected things you can find if you’re alert. I found this 7-Spot Ladybird at the Dunbar Battery last week. Along with a few others of its species it was climbing in the vegetation around a mirrored cuboid sculpture.

Seven-spot ladybird

7-Spot Ladybirds are everywhere this year, which is lovely to see (the collective noun for ladybirds is a loveliness!). I’ve not seen so many since the hot summer of 1976, when they were everywhere in huge numbers.

The lime (linden) trees are in bloom just now and smell wonderful. In fact I often smell them before I see them, though it’s also well worth looking at their pretty flowers. There are lime trees everywhere in Edinburgh, this one in the photo below is growing near a school.

Lime flowers

Nature is everywhere! If like me, you live in a built up area, take time to visit your local greenspaces, and learn the names of your street trees and the insects and birds that live around you. You may be surprised by how much you can see and hear!

It’s not just nature of course. Last week, having walked slowly through Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens and still finding myself early for my train, I spontaneously decided (on the strength of the advertising poster outside the building) to go into the Royal Scottish Academy on the Mound to see the latest exhibition in their small but perfectly formed Academicians Gallery. Tabiji by Paul Furneaux is inspired by the artist's experience of the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage in Japan.

Interesting Article

There’s an excellent article about nature in burial grounds on the Country Life website, you can read it here.

I’ve Been Published

I’m delighted that my poem Destination Unknown has been published on the Eunoia website. You can read it here.