COP 28: a small, local action – tree exchange

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I must admit to feeling disheartened in the run up to another COP, where the oil and gas companies seem to be seeing the talks as an opportunity to do business, rather than prioritise moving to cheaper and cleaner and more local alternatives. The powers that be sometimes seem especially powerful.

So here’s a tiny, smaller-than-David-vs-Goliath idea which is currently happening in my drive. Just in case any of you good readers feel similarly, and are looking for small but meaningful actions. There’s a lot of us who care, who want to leave the world in as good a state as we can. So, rather than despairing over what isn’t happening, here’s something that is. Mighty oaks from little acorns and all that…..

It all started a couple of weeks ago, when my husband came across one of our old neighbours digging tiny tree seedlings out of a council flowerbed. Unsuprisingly, he asked her what she was doing. She replied that a friend of hers had two acres she was trying to replant as woodland, and was looking for trees. Now, I express unease on a regular basis about the number of tree seed- and saplings I pull out of our garden. The squirrels are very keen on planting nuts, which germinate remarkably well for instance….. So, he mentioned it to me, and I got in touch with the lady with the two acres. I dug out all the readily available saplings, and began to collect them from other people. The first load of about 100 trees went to her, and to someone else who has twelve acres they’re rewilding.

I wondered if other people might have spare trees in their garden, so emailed my friends at Transition Woodbridge, who passed the message on. Trees are arriving most days, and another person has expressed a need for small native trees, especially ones suitable for growing in a hedge. Another friend also has a number of oaks springing up in her allotment. So we have more sources of trees, and more places where they can go. It’s always good when actions become collective, when people gather together and all do the little bit they can.

Now, who knows where this will go, but for now, I reckon we’ve easily been able to provide a new home for getting on for 200 infant trees. That’s not nothing. That is something. It’s food for insects and birds, it’s shelter, it’s improved soil fertility and water management, it’s less carbon and more oxygen. It’s one in the eye for despair, too.

So, here’s to taking the small actions we can. You never know where they might lead. In 100 years from now, those nine tiny oaks might be home to many creatures, having a profoundly positive impact on soil, air and water …. And carbon. Nearly all life on the planet is carbon based, after all.

Poem: A solitary shining drop

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Sedum, after the rain had cleared.

The practice of wandering – often around the garden – contines to be a a helpful one for me, quieting and contemplative. The practice of standing still and looking, too. Quite a lot of apparent “nothing” seems to be fertile ground, after all. Something catches my attention, as if it is saying: ‘look, here is something, a marvel, a meaning, a glimpse of beauty’. I am coming to think they are happening all the time, and what makes the difference is my openness to seeing, hearing and knowing them.

And so, when the sun broke through after the rain, I went outside, and sat on my coat, and looked. Some distance across the lawn, I saw a bright red light, flashing, and, curious, saw a drop of rain acting as a prism. I watched it for as long as the angle of light made it shine with colour. It called to mind two ancient stories – the burning bush, and the flood – from the Hebrew Scriptures. How the world is full of epiphanies. And again, I was in awe of the way the natural world – of earth and fire, water and air – invites us to listen, to pay attention, to wonder.

A solitary shining drop

Just now, I saw the sun
catching a raindrop as it
rolled so slowly down a
sedum stem, fleshy
and green.

It shone through red, rich,
neon and ruby, flashing as the
stem swayed in the breeze, taking
the drop through that one
ray of light, back and forth.

Then it suddenly changed
to the dazzling blue of cobalt
and lapis lazuli – oh, heavenly blue.
Heavenly blue.

Just now, for a moment, this
treasure made of light and rain,
this solitary shining drop
becomes a tiny shard of promise,
a slim fragment of the arc
that holds the sun and the rain.

It all speaks.  All speaks. In the
mind’s quiet, and in a flash of
brilliance that turns your head.
A gentle whisper and a
burning bush, both. 
A drop and a rainbow.
The world shines with
meaning, murmuring,
as the green earth is
drenched by sun and rain.

Poem: After the storm – October ’23

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Last Friday, during storm Babet, Suffolk experienced some of the most severe flooding in England. It was good to be able to stay home and keep in touch with friends, making sure they were safe. Many people have lost their homes, their businesses and their posessions. Tales of help and rescue are still emerging. Places that have not flooded in living memory have been badly effected. We are used to threats from the sea in this part of the world, but think of ourselves as living in a dry place, unused to severe storms. The climate is changing, and it is unsettling.

As I’m writing this, the next storm is about to arrive, with a weather warning for wind beginning this evening. The mild, even warm, air holds so much moisture, the trees are still in leaf, the roots in soft soil. This morning I hurried to pot up a whole load of tree seedlings for a friend of a friend who is planting a small wood nearby, and I marvelled at how easily they slid out of the earth.

This strangely perturbed and perturbing season of weather is full of beauty, plants and flowers still growing vigorously on the first day of November. The air is full of insects and birdsong. Frogs are hopping whenever I disturb the plants in the garden. As I sat in a patch of warmth I remembered some words of Robin Wall Kimmerer which I love, from a book I treasure:

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

And as I began to write, that idea seemed particularly rich and right for the moment, and for always. What gifts we receive. I hope we can return such prodigal generosity, and care for the Earth. We do need the Earth to continue to care for us.

After the storm, October ‘23

There is a low sun
slanting gold across
all this humming green,
all this hidden life
whispering through
each bending blade,
and the birds sing loud
after the silence of the storm,
as loud and full as spring.

And the sun warms my skin
after the floods and the
rain and the rising dark waters,
and my skin is soothed and comforted
even as my mind is troubled.

What will become of us, what will
become of us all, as the air
heavies again with water, burdened,
and that water, fallen, heavies,
burdened, with brown earth,
for each year brings more strangeness.

And yet, even so, the light
drips with gold, shining
through translucent wings,
insects swaying in those
wailful choirs, in many
tiny flocks, rising and
falling in the gusting warmth,
more and more each year.

It feels so small, this heart-response
to so much perplexity. And small it is.

And yet it is something
to marvel at the beauty that
is still offered, daily,
to say yes, and thank you,
for the green overflowing of all
this life, and to tend within my reach.
To receive, to love, to speak,
to tell you even of these
rain-drenched dripping flowers –
look, heavy and ripe and bowing –
and dare to hope that in some
deep and barely discernible way
this care, this love, this joining of eyes
upon beauty, is the softest whisper,
almost beyond hearing, of
mending and healing and
knitting together,
stitched through with
golden, endless light.

This poem also owes a debt to John Keats, and his incomparable Ode to Autumn.

Poem: The grace of seeds

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As we come to the end of the Season of Creation, I offer a harvest of seeds.

I love the way seeds spread in the garden, finding new nooks and crannies to settle, new places where plants will grow and in their turn offer flowers to the insects, seeds to the wind and the birds.

As I was watching fluffy seedheads catch the breeze a few weeks ago, I felt my attention catch on the seeds. I felt that insistent “look!” which comes sometimes, and alerts me to some depth, some beauty, some meaning. It’s always worth attending to. And this time I saw the reckless generosity, the persistence of seeds, unfolding to me a truth about creation’s blythe insistence on hope. Each offering of seeds represents so many second chances, fresh starts, try agains. And the word forgiveness came to mind – as if the seeds were offering a chance of Spring despite, in the face of, the ways we continue to undermine and deplete the natural world. The seeds a sign of forgiveness, a chance to try again, an ever repeating offer of new life.

Some of you who have been good enough to follow this blog for a while may remember that I return often to the themes of the parables – the stories Jesus told – especially the ones that speak of the natural world. I love the way Jesus quotes the psalms to explain this mysterious teaching method – “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 13:35) The Hebrew Scriptures tell of a vibrant world saturated with the glory of God, of living things being animated, and full of wisdom, if we will but pay attention. I hope to write more about that another time, but for now, I’ll return to seeds. If you’d like to read more about the parables and the seeds on this blog, you can look here and here to begin with.

The poem I’m sharing with you today is full of touches from the Gospels, and another day, if I can, I might unpack them for any of you who are interested. I felt the call to “look” was an invitation into all sorts of deep truths……But I hope the piece stands on its own, open to all who look with wonder.

But for now, below, the poem. It’s been one of those pieces that has revealed its meaning to me in the process of writing, that has felt like a discovery or an uncovering. I wanted to share it with you today, this last day of the Season of Creation. I hope I haven’t hurried it along too much – it’s been taking its time. I hope it is ready. We’ll see!

The grace of seeds.

Seeds are blowing in the breeze,
gentle, white and light.
Fairies, I used to call them as a child,
back when the world was full of seeds,
and butterflies, and glimmers of enchantment.

I breathe slowly and long
into all this ripening.
All this, all, glows with a deeper life –
light and colour under the skin,
shining with a song
of greening and ripening.

Each seedhead releasing a kind of
forgiveness that falls with the seed,
falls to the earth bearing
new beginnings, seventy times seven.
Life wills to live, despite all we have done.
Life uncoils again, and again.
I am humble before it.
Before the caterpillars on the toadflax,
the frog stirring beneath the strawberries.

The world is indeed full of grace.
We do not deserve these chances, again,
and again, and again. And yet,
deserving is not the point. Seeds fall,
it is the very nature of things,
and blow on the breeze. Each one
offering multitudes. It is the way of seeds.

Might this grace, one day, even today,
catch us in its loving web as the trumpets of
bindweed blaze out a song of liberation,
and the blackbirds tumble fearlessly,
hungrily, in the hedge’s ripeness?

For the seeds float still, and
the air is still full of enchantment.
Life whispers, it calls us, it sings to us.
Does it know we will turn towards it,
at last, wooed and wonderstruck,
and learn we belong, have belonged
all along?
We might, we may, we can.
Those dry seeds show us how.

All the pictures are from the garden – and the narrow strip outside the wall by the road, where I’ve been sprinkling seeds for years.

Poem: Gaia at Ely Cathedral

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I’m sharing this post again, September 2023, as part of the Season of Creation some Christian traditions are marking at this time. So many of us have experienced extreme weather conditions this summer. I write in exceptional September heat, surrounded by welcome green from earlier rain.

I hope you find this post a helpful starting point for contemplation.

Additional note, 24th September. I am delighted that this post has appeared at The Cottage, Diana Butler Bass’ rich and thought-provoking Substack, this morning. I’ve admired her work for many years, and it’s such an honour, and very exciting for me, to find myself in her company today, under Inspiration. It’s a profound exploration of envy and gratitude, and a reflection on the deep drivers of our climate and ecological crisis. It’s well worth reading and allowing it to do its inner work on us. You can do so here.

Original post, published 12th July 2021, emerging from lockdowns:

As we are beginning to venture out a little more, we thought we would pay a visit to Ely, and the vast indoor space of its ancient cathedral. They often have contemporary art there, which helps the old stones continue to sing, giving a new perspective on ancient truths. We knew that Gaia, an installation by Luke Jerram, was going to be there in July, and so we went and saw this beautiful, astonishing sight. The comparative emptiness of the cathedral space made it all the more powerful as it floated above us.

And as the space is vast, and it takes time to walk up to, around and beyond the piece, you do have time and space in which to allow the work to speak to you, to stir up responses, and to pray. I am sure that one of the intentions is to give us all an opportunity to experience something like “earthrise”, when the astronauts first saw the whole of the Earth from space, and how that shifted their perspective, and began to change the way all of us are able to see our home. The staggering, indescribable beauty of the whole called out my sense of awe, which sat uncomfortably alongside my awareness of the damage we are doing to our precious, unique home.

In the setting of the cathedral, as Gaia hangs in the nave under the painted ceiling which tells the long stretch of the Bible’s story, I found the language of repentance surprisingly, and helpfully, came to mind. Repentance both in our more familiar understanding of sorrow for wrongdoing, and desire to amend, and in the possibly more ancient meanings carried in the old texts, of returning home, and of undergoing a profound change of mind – a paradigm shift in the way you see.

Much of my writing celebrates the beauty of the natural world, how lovely, precious, and vulnerable it is. But sometimes, that love spills over into grief. So the old stones, and the old story, seemed illuminated by our current crisis, and, in turn, those ancient words seemed to express something necessary, and powerful, and, in the end, with the potential for hope.

You can listen to the poem here.

Gaia at Ely Cathedral

She seems to float, lit up with her own light,
slowly turning, blue and blooming with clouds
as we walk up, look up, small before her.

While above our steps,
the familiar painted roof
rolls on, telling its painted story,
from the tree, and the garden,
on towards this

fathomless shining beauty,
the ‘all’ that was so very good
in that beginning.
Now as she turns
we see how she hangs
below the story’s last scenes –
the gift of a beloved child
held on his mother’s lap,
held forward towards us,
loved and given and giving,
and the wounded golden king,
who gives still.

And below, below hangs the whole shining Earth,
dazzling, vast with sea,
turning and flowering with clouds
from the southern ice-shine,
melting although we do not see her weep,

And the land, those small green swathes
and swags, are dressed in white too,
a veil of vapour,
while the deserts spread brown
and red above our eyes.

The lands are small, countries
seem tales we tell.
What is certain is this one great
flow – ocean and ice and cloud –
and the unseen winds that bear them
through our blue, breathing air.

And the people stand beneath her,
lit by ice, and hold up their hands
as if to carry her, or hold her,
or save her from falling.

How beautiful it is.
How strange and wondrous
that we should be creatures
who live within so much living perfection.

And as she turns slowly
under the child and the king,
I wonder, what do those
familiar words mean now,
‘the sins of the world’,
as the stain of our reckless harm
seeps through the blue and green,
through all this living glory,

And is there any hope in our
waking up to beauty with grief
and loss, even as dust and ashes
float across the sky,
across us all, late as we are
in our repenting?


And is there hope,
hope that we might be granted
this grace – time
for amendment of life,
to tend the garden
with its leaves and fruit,
shining and greening,
to take part in the work
of loving and healing,
of restoration,
of making all things new.

Looking at Gaia from behind the communion table brought to mind the words of repentance from that service, and I was aware of my sense of what “the sins of the world” might mean was creaking open a little wider.

Poem: Matisse Cut-Outs, and a nod to David Hockney

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Matisse, The Parakeet and the Mermaid, 1952

I shared a poem with you last week – What the space holds. Writing that poem reminded me of the extraordinary Matisse cut-outs, imagining the negative spaces left when his scissors had finished thier task. I realised that I’d never shared with you a poem I wrote about those works…..

Tate Modern in London had a very beautiful exhibition some years ago, in 2014, of these late and astonishing cut-outs. I was deeply moved by what we saw and experienced. You can still buy the catalogue from The Tate – and other places too – if you’re interested. As ever, as a book that accompanies a major exhibition, it is a revealing and insightful exploration of the work.

A thing that struck me was the contrast between the photos of the frail but engrossed artist, towards the end of his life, and the vibrant, joyful celebration of life itself that the cut-outs embodied. The vitatlity of the art he created sang from the walls. Finding it hard to make art in the ways he had before, he developed this extraordinary technique to transform his relatively confined spaces into a paradise of form and colour.

I felt the deep wisdom of this response, this openness to beauty, to nature, to life as a whole. It seemed to offer a brightness that could illuminate our days.

Henri Matisse working on paper cut out. Undated photo. Getty images

Matisse Cut-Outs

The rooms are thick and warm
with people looking, in reverence.
There is a hush
as we move like pilgrims
through doorways
and spaces full of quiet light.

There are photographs of you, in bed,
or tucked in a chair, old and crumpled.
Yet, in your outstretched hand is that
long stick, tipped with charcoal,
drawing, drawing,
or a curling pile of paper at your feet,
unravelling from those black scissors.

When the outside became unreachable
you turned your rooms into a garden,
with swallows dancing on the walls,
and fig leaves, and pomegranates,
mermaids and stars.
You are covering your walls with
bright cut-outs that sway in the warm breeze,
lavender and myrtle, while you breathe deep. 

This is what you did
while pain nagged close,
while death grew closer.
You made the beauty
you could make.
You made joy visible.
You did not stop –
in the shadow of
so much destruction,
so much war-grief –
you kept the charcoal
and the scissors moving,
an Eden at your ending.

I thought again about this exhibition a few weeks ago when I went to the Lighroom at King’s Cross with my daughter to see David Hockney’s Bigger and Closer (not smaller and further away). I loved the way the projections immersed you in the work, especially the Spring pieces he’s been developing using an i-Pad. You felt the power and beauty of the trees bursing into life, the brightness of the green, the froth of the cow-parsley. I bought a book as a souvenir, Spring Cannot be Cancelled, which I’m currently reading. It’s particularly good at capturing the mood of lockdown in his Normandy studio, and the intensity of the observations of the arrival of spring that time of isolation and deep uncertainty generated.

I was wondering whether to couple these two art events together, I do hope Hockney has many more prolific years ahead to enrich us all. I do not mean to suggest that he is an artist at the end of his life. But it seems to me there is something in common between these two artists in the intensity, freedom and joy of their later work. There is a real clear-sightedness and poignancy in the appreciation of beauty, and an urgency too. There is a deep embodied wisdom and wonder which pours through to the viewer.

It reminds me of Mary Oliver’s “instructions for living a life”:

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Exodus poem on Diana Butler Bass

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A couple of years ago, during lockdown, I felt drawn to explore the stories of Moses and the Exodus.

One of these was inspired by Moses and the burning bush, where he takes off his shoes because the ground is holy. This poem now finds itself at Diana Butler Bass’ The Cottage, as part of her marking of the season of creation. It’s so good to be part of this beautiful musing on an important season, to be marking a shift in awareness as we begin to pause and reconsider our relationship with the rest of life on this dear blue-green planet.

I hope the link below will take you to her rich and thoughtful exploration of this theme.

https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/sunday-musings-f9a?r=46vqv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

You can find my original post and poem here.

Gaia at Ely Cathedral. You can find out more about that here.

Previous visits to The Cottage can be found ..
The Sower and the Soil
Mary, at your feet
Jesus washes Judas’ feet

Poem: What the space holds

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Gradually, we’ve been reducing the size of the unmown places in the grass. It’s been growing so fast this year, and the flowers have had a second and a third go. The sun and the rain have kept everything flourishing. There are small frogs and grasshoppers, and many bees still. It’s worth going very slowly, giving everyone a chance to hop out of the way, and leaving places of refuge. Little by little….

I wish I’d taken a picture of this patch above in the week before it was cut, when a round shape appeared flattening the stems. We were pretty sure it was the muntjac who is a regular visit to the garden – earlier this year, there was a youngster too. You can read more about the deer in the garden here and here. She is a joy.
I do worry about her crossing the road between the woods and the garden, about the speeding cars – but the only time I have ever seen her trotting along the road, everyone stopped and waited for her to be safe. Kind drivers!

As I sat by her space I imagined her presence. I felt the hum of the cars through the ground. And I thought of all the places where the creatures who used to make a home no longer do – all the absences. I felt the loss, even as I felt the beauty and abundance of this late flowering meadow. And so this poem emerged, in fits and starts. It’s taken its time, has a basenote of loss, and I hope it carries the gentle tenderness of the deer, and the many creatures I feel kin to even in this one garden.

What the space holds

There is a space in the long grass,
a flattened disc of green stems,
while all around late flowers
nod. A curved bowl, waiting,
rimmed with golden light.

Low down, face close to grass,
I hear the hiss of breeze through
stems, the buzz of bees, crickets,
even, perhaps, butterfly wings.
But there is no trace of whoever comes
here, night after night, and circles, and
settles to sleep. Too sweet a hay-smell
for fox or badger, too big for cat.

I open my mind’s eye to the night,
quiet, and across my heart
a dark shape with long,
delicate legs steps gently,
picks her way through the black
shimmer of stems and fills
this space with a shadow –
a shadow whose heart beats and
ears twitch. I see a dream-deer,
breathing, her brown sides rising
and falling as the space fills
with living warmth, with the
softness of deer, with the gentleness
of one who comes by night.

And as I dream, as I treasure
the absent deer, I think of all
the empty spaces
and places, holding now
only memory, fading,
or worse, nothing.
I think of the absences
that there have been
and that are yet to come.


Patterns cut out of sky where flocks of birds,
tumbles of bees and butterflies are not,
but once were. The rivers where
there were fish, who are not.
Places where the beavers and the big cats
and the red squirrels are not, and their spaces
cradle nothing, empty and mourning,
Earth’s arms aching.

This soft round space that has
become a bowl of dreams
does not know if the sweet deer will
return tonight, as car sound
rumbles through the earth.

This bowl in the grass
ringing with her absence, with
the absence of all creatures who
are not here, but who once were,
as I run my finger around the rim,
and feel the tremor of loss upon me,
and through me. May she be safe.
May she and all creatures be safe.

The final lines of blessing draw on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which I have found deeply helpful and incorporate into my prayer and contemplation regularly.

When I was writing about the spaces where creatures are not, I remembered a wonderful Matisse exhibition we went to of his cutouts, done in his final months and filling his rooms with birds and flowers. I imagined the pieces of paper uncuring from his scissors and falling to the ground. I wondered if what we would be left with would be these negative spaces, with the birds and flowers no more, or if we would find our hearts opened to care for those we share this beautiful green world with.

Poem: Unknown – oxeye daisy

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Growing a garden which you hope will enrich and support wildlife, as well as provinding beauty for your own eye, is always full of suprises. This is no formal experiment, where we surveyed the insect and bird populations before we began to do things differently – in no small part because the process is changing and evolving and not based on a single decision point.

Last time I shared a poem with you, I hinted at the mysteries of not knowing. There are so many creatures I have no name for, yet, and I’m content to find out slowly. You can read that last poem, about the twilight creatures, here.
This new piece carries a description of an unknown insect. I’m afraid I didn’t have my camera with me, and still don’t know what it was. Maybe one day I’ll find out! (Edit 22/7/23 see end of post)

This second “Unknown” poem also holds within it a reflection on seeds, and our tendency to see things as small acts.

Unknown – Oxeye daisy

This morning, the oxeye daisy cradled
an insect I had never seen before.
Unknown, unimagined,
strange and handsome.

Long, black, elegant, with an
abdomen scriven in yellow runes.
It stroked its long, curled antennae tenderly,
as if they were locks of hair. 
Not knowing me, it knew no fear.
It did not fly as I gazed.

That small pinch of seed from last year –
tiny, dry as sand – each day brings a
new and wondrous fruitfulness,
an unanticipated beauty,
a new joy, a new abundance.
The scattering of it was
no small act, it seems.
And I am coming to think that
there are no small acts, after all.

For those of you who are interested in the readings followed by many churches, now is a time when the parable of the Sower is often called to mind – along with other seed related parables. This reflection on the scattering of seed, and the fruits that follow, draws on the insights of those stories. You could begin to explore those insights here, and here

Edit 22/7/23: In the comments below Caroline suggests it was a longhorn beetle. Here’s a picture from the Natural History Museum – a spotted longhorn beetle. It’s the one I saw! Welcome to the garden, little friend.

The Sower and the Soil, finding myself at Wild Goose unexpectedly!

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Once again, I am astonished, delighted and honoured to find something I wrote has made its way in the world, and is keeping the most excellent company with Diana Butler Bass as she shares from the last day of the Wild Goose Festival in The Cottage.

Please do take the time to read her reflections, and those she has gathered. It is a rich feast, with much to refelect on. The theme of Sower and Soil seems more relevant than ever as our soils become depleted on many levels. I am very struck by Cathleen Falsani’s reflections on the parable of the Sower from Matthew’s Gospel, which really resonate with me.

You can follow the link to Diana’s post here.

Van Gough’s The Sower

The parable is one I’ve returned to again and again, it seems to carry richer and different meanings whenever I encounter it. Here are some links to posts on the subject, in case you’d like to follow today’s readings.

My retelling of the parable is here.

More here

And the post with the blessing that Diana Butler Bass shared is here.

Thank you for joining me here on the blog. May all our soils be fertile, may we tend and care for them.