Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Yes, it's October, which I know is really late to be blogging about the summer. How does  September disappear so fast? We fitted in a holiday to Cornwall as well as all the stuff I've told you about here. That was another new thing - first time we've been to Cornwall as a family - but it definitely deserves its own post. Just one picture to give you a flavour of the trip... New hobbies The boys and I have discovered we like life on eight wheels! We went to Rollerworld for the first time at the beginning of the summer, and since then we have spent quite a lot of time there. And bought roller skates.  The rink also offers lessons, which are useful for practising things other than skating around in a large circle. We learned how to stop (key skill!) Toby and Theo have got good at going backwards, while I'm still working out how to turn around. When they're not whizzing around a skating rink with me, the boys have been firing pointy things through the air with Graham. H...

Our time in Texas didn't get mentioned in my previous post .  North Texas does have trees, of course, but it's not big tree country.  It used to be prairie.  There is grass, and cacti, and flowers.  Even the cacti have flowers. Transplanting myself from cool damp British woodlands to hot dry Texas prairies meant learning a whole new wildflower vocabulary.  Instead of Cowslips and Ragged Robin, there was Turk's Cap and Indian Blanket.  In the spring, you didn't go to take photos in the bluebell woods, but among fields of bluebonnets. English bluebell woods Texas bluebonnets So much of the original prairie has gone now, that there is a strong movement towards preserving what is left, and planting native species.  We visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Centre in Austin, which is stunning - lovely buildings merging beautifully with the surrounding scenery.  And I had a go at cultivating my own patch of native flowers in the backyard. Even when ...

Starting Get Outside in Lent made me think about how the natural world has intertwined with my life.  Considering the different categories - trees, water, flowers, birds - immediately brought up memories of particular plants, animals and rivers. Writing about this feels a little like escapism - conjuring up birds in clear skies and summer afternoons in a canoe, instead of dealing with destruction and desolation.  But being connected to nature is what makes us human too.  We cannot reduce the rest of the world to an exploited resource, or a mere backdrop to our fights and squabbles.  We are part of the earth, and the earth is part of us. So, trees. Image © Yeldall Manor. Used with permission. Like many children, my early encounters with trees involved climbing them.  I remember a particular cherry tree on a piece of rough ground next to our house.  An old lawn chair provided the boost up to its lowest branch, which was worn smooth and shiny from all the fin...

The 40 days of Lent can be awfully long if you're trying to do something (or not do something) every day.  Here are a couple of things I found this year which I thought I might actually be able to keep up with.  One has a very small action each day, and the other is something to read and think about - but only on Sundays, until you get to Holy Week. Get Outside in Lent Christian environmental charity A Rocha has provided six weeks of ideas to get you and your family outside in Lent.  The PDF is here:  https://bit.ly/ECGetOutsideforLent .  There are six activities each week (and yes, the first one really is "Hug a tree") and a suggestion for a celebration and prayer on Sundays.   The logical way to do six weeks seems to be to start next Monday, but then the final Sunday is Easter Sunday.  So I guess you could also start today (or tomorrow) and finish on the Thursday before Easter.  There are no dates, making it pretty flexible. Ashes to Rainb...

I wonder if you feel like you've had to do a lot of growing lately? For once I'm not talking about vegetable gardens (although the strawberries are ripening fast), but personal growth in response to events around us.  There have been so many things happening in the world that we have to understand and adapt to, and it often feels overwhelming.  How do we comprehend it?  What's the right thing to do?  How much do we have to change, personally?  What are we responsible for? Changing and growing is complicated.  It's not like hopscotch, where you hop neatly from box to box and end up at the finish line.  Sometimes there are obvious changes to make and actions to take, but not always.  A good analogy might be a whirlpool, where each part swirls into the next, sometimes trapping you in an eddy, sometimes pushing you onwards. I couldn't do a good diagram of a whirlpool, so you'll have to imagine this one being full of eddies and swirls instead of nice n...

The endless murmur of traffic passing on the nearby dual carriageway has been muted.  There are no vapour trails crossing the blue sky overhead, and the sound of birds singing seems clearer than ever before.  The world has suddenly become a much quieter place. It turns out that we can change our habits and cut carbon dioxide emissions - for reasons that no one would have wanted, and a human and economic cost that we don't yet know.  The EU may achieve a 9% decrease in emissions in 2020 due to the coronavirus lockdown, but the big question is what happens afterwards.  Will this be a blip, or the start of a downward trend? Meanwhile, this period of enforced inactivity has given us an opportunity to reflect on the changes we have made so far, and maybe given some of us time to make a few more.  I just thought I'd share a few of mine - not to show off, as a lot of people are way ahead of me, but to give us all a little more hope and inspiration to keep mak...

I wasn't really thinking about water this week until I heard a news report on the radio which suggested that people should reduce their water usage from 140 litres per day to 100 litres.  Well, I had no idea how much water I used per day, but as it happened, we had just received our water bill.  I did a quick calculation, looked at the figure, and thought, "That can't possibly be right!"  I checked my conversion, checked my arithmetic, and finally looked up 'average household water usage'.  Of course.  The 140-litre figure I had in my head was per person; we were pretty close to the average household figure, at around 350 litres per day. Image credit: Pixabay But... 350 litres?  Every day?  That's 35 buckets full!  Imagine if I had to carry all that from a well!  I really was staggered to find out just how much water we get through.  This fascinating document   from the Energy Saving Trust goes into a lot more detail about...