Here's an excerpt from a great book I've just read: How To Be Wild by Simon Barnes (he of purple sporting prose in The Times) - its the kind of book that's almost perfect for me, a collection of heart-jolting pieces of nature writing, exploring the emotions we feel on interacting with the wildness that still lies all around us - it's actually a bit like reading a whole book of Nige

Anyway, on to Barnes:

Whilst I was in Germany I saw two insects of interest (to me anyway) this here big chap is a Great Green Bush Cricket, that flew onto my beer glass one evening sitting on the veranda and gave me quite a fright!




...and this was a real treat - this is a very large, and quite rare Poplar Admiral.
Certainly one of the most impressive wild butterflies I've ever had the honour of seeing!

Today, only a few miles from my house, is the last ever Royal Show. Apparently it's been killed off by the simple fact that farmers, who used to come to the agricultural shows once a year to buy their big-ticket equipment and find a wife, simply find their tractors and women online these days.

Seeing as I would have really liked to attend, I could have told the organizers that it may have helped them boost visitor numbers by holding the event on the weekend?

Anyway, it's always sad when things like this cease to be, and yet another little tear in the fabric that binds us to the land opens up.

After somehow vomiting up the word 'Auroch' on Brit's Blog, I thought that I should have a little look-see to find out about our moribund bovine chums- and I got more than I bargained for!

Apparently Aurochs were around up to renaissance times, dwindling in numbers until the last one popped his chitinous clogs in Poland in 1627. Interestingly, historians speculate that the vicious nature of the bulls was a main contributing factor in their demise, as to kill one in caveman times was considered an act of extreme bravery, so consequently every spotty herbert with a wispy moustache and a spear went off looking to kill as many stupid lumps of beef as he could.

The bit that I found quite interesting was where the story emerged of the Auroch becoming a Nazi Cow. Apparently in the 1920's in Germany, The Heck brothers, working in Berlin and Munich zoos, decided to 'breed back' the Auroch by mixing up parts of every cow they could think of with remnants of the Auroch's blood in it. This breeding programme was picked up by the Nazis, who were keen to promote anything that harked back to an imaginary Aryan elysium, and liked the idea of racially pure supermeganazicows.

After the war, the breeding programme was disbanded as people didnt really like the thought of Nazi cows, and many scientists rejected the idea of 'breeding back' an extinct animal as unsound. However, some Heck Cattle lived on and the breeding progamme was picked up again and slowly but surely the Auroch is coming back in a revised form, like in the picture above. In a way the Vesta Curry of cows, they are now referred to as Reconstituted Aurochs

I for one look forward to eating one with some chips and ketchup as soon as possible.

Gaw in his post on dandelions, and Nige via his post on daisies, both manage to allow the spectre of flower racism to rear its ugly head, by suggesting that the Dandelion, with its reputation for making children wet the bed, may be a 'lower class' plant in need of extermination, lynch mobs, agent orange etc

Well, I do actually agree with them, but just to redress the balance of the argument in favour of our little leonine chums, here's a picture I took of a field in the peak district this spring which shows that outside of the garden and in profusion, they can sometimes become a beautiful feature of the landscape in their own right.

I found a nice blog this morning called Environmental Graffiti, which currently has a post all about my favourite plant, the Venus Flytrap. I currently have a plant growning on my office windowsill that has somehow mananged to survive a whole winter without feeding, although it has grown straggly and anaemic in the process. However now the weather has improved, it has just begun to produce thicker, more deadly looking shoots, which I am hoping are going grow into really dark red jewel-like traps in the next few weeks. The venus flytrap is certainly one of those wonders of the natural world that actualy become more and more mysterious the more you learn about them. The miracle of their evolution is mind-boggling, that's for sure.

What an amazing drawing of a fly(click to enlarge), managing to look both old and futuristic, natural and entirely robotic at the same time. Which ties in nicely with my current interest in bio-organic design. Taken from the 1857 Julius Victor Carus book on invertebrate animals: 'Icones Zootomicae, die Wirbellosen Thiere'

I have become obsessed with finding wild horseradish. Having never previously known that the fiery king of condiments was to be found freely in our hedgerows, I have spent the past week scanning every inch of greenery in the hope of finding some.

Unfortunately for me, there is one major problem with finding wild horseradish in situ - that being that it bears an almost identical resemblance to one of the most common (and unedible) plants of the hedgerow - the dock:


slowly but surely I am gaining the ability to differentiate between the two - here's what I know:

• docks have dark green, turning red spotted leaves
• the leaves are not toothed
• single central stem with leaves branching off

• a 'shuttlecock' appearance, with a central node in the ground that all leaves spring directly from
• It also has toothed edges to the light green leaves
• It produces white flowers