REFLECTING ON 2023 AND LOOKING ONWARD TO 2024

Each year is like a revolving door it appears although as each year is added on the revolutions are faster than the years before. Perhaps it is just my take on it.  Many years ago I coined my own phrase ‘each good day is a bonus’ and I endeavour to stay with that mantra. It is not that every day should be great or even that good but the benefit of having a good one is immense.

As 2024 breaks steadily into the winter month of January there is usually reflection of some kind. We have plans that will take us back to North Cornwall where we spent some of last summer. It  was great, enjoyable and above all peaceful. It is a work in progress as we work with nature to try and ensure a home for local wildlife inhabitants without being too intrusive on their  lives. On the  morning of 4th our own piece of Eden was soaking in a storm and all the rain before that. My son is down there enjoying the environment and he is there for a practical purpose. He has three eating apple tree to plant, one crabapple and one plum tree to get into the ground. He has not found it that easy as the moorland soil contains granite lumps and roots left over from the Blackthorn. While he was gazing out from his shelter he watched a small bird feeding on a large Willow branch and from his description and our knowledge it was most probably a Willow Tit. It is rare and we have them there. It is their habitat and I want to see them survive. That has to be a bonus for today. 

Image from Cornwall Wildlife Trust of Willow Warbler

He will be down there again later in the month. All three of us will be there in March and for a period in the summer months. We have work to do and working outside is beneficial to our lives.

That is looking forward but when 2023 was ending I reflected upon the influences that had affected me and us. Our North Cornish Adventure with all the planning it entails was a continuing thought how we should progress and respect the natural world. 

We are avid readers in our house and although I am eclectic in my tastes I read novels including the classics but I also read books on environmental issues. I am a member of Cornwall Wildlife Trust and I am encouraged by their projects and the work they carry out. Two books came to my notice through reading their articles.

Cornerstones by Benedict Macdonald and published by Bloomsbury Wildlife is about ‘Wildforces That Can Change The World’. I reviewed this book on 15th October and this a paragraph taken from it.

Cornerstones is about the hierarchy of plants where they fit in with the other hierarchy of the mammal and bird worlds. The dysfunction of all of that has been created by the human need for control in an effort to sustain itself at the extreme expense of habitat loss, over use of chemicals to control the bugs and excessive use of petrochemicals. At the very end of this destruction lies the end of humanity.

My second book that impressed me much was Orchard - A Year in England’s Eden by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates. It is about the way an old orchard, free from insecticides, deals with each month as it comes and the birds and other wildlife that are able to inhabit that corner of Herefordshire.

Both books are about nature and about us when we know what good we can do. It is a question of living side by side.