feasting on weeds

It’s been a while. The end of the year is always a busy one with other work and it takes me out of the practice of my regular foraging and capturing nature. I don’t ever stop being outside, but my walks become more about distance and time and getting it done and seeking shelter from…

Lughnasagh already. August is always the biggest season to be busy with hedgerow activities in this part of the world. This year the trees are especially heavy with apples, plums and seeds and fungi is popping all over the place. This means lots of gathering and sorting and toiling in the kitchen, drying, sieving, freezing,…

The red soldier beetles have been at it for weeks in my back yard. It’s virtually an orgy. I never had, or at least never noticed a large enough number of common red soldier beetles in my garden before I introduced some of their favourites – hogweed, wild carrot and long Yorkshire Fog grasses –…

A reminder that you can see the latest bookable events here! I had a nice visitor to the garden a couple of weeks ago (no, not Ollie!) – a big healthy frog! We are lucky that even though we are caught between the built up busy roads of East Belfast we have so many exciting…

It’s summer. But it’s May. And everything is out at once. Today I saw hemlock water dropwort in flower alongside cow parsley in flower alongside violets in flower alongside sorrel in flower. Everything is in a hurry it seems that spring and summer are colliding all at once. Worst of all, the elder flower is…

I’m behind, as usual. I was meant to start this new site and blog in early 2024 but time wasn’t on my side so here we are four months into 2025 and I’m only getting round to it. The plants are firing ahead and I’m still wondering if it could still be January. Usually, January…