CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

  The first blackthorn aka sloe Prunus spinosa flowers opened in a hedge alongside one of my favourite walks in Weardale last week. This of...

I've finally taken the bird feeders down in the garden, because there's plenty of natural food available now that spring has arrived...

  A leafless hawthorn hedge in the Tunstall valley, County Durham, shorn with geometric precision by a tractor-mounted hedge cutter, but dec...

  Seen on my walk into town this morning - an exquisite rain-glossed rosette of fresh, spoon-shaped succulent leaves of Danish scurvy-grass ...

 A freezing cold afternoon, but a swarm of these winter gnats Trichocer a sp. was dancing, in a shape-shifting column, above the garden hedg...