Water, water everywhere…

Karen Neville

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Nature Sketchbook

Artist Helen Grimbleby unveils the next ‘episode’ of her Nature Sketchbook

August. Long school summer holidays in full flow. Seaside trips. Rock pooling, crabbing, fishing, sea swims, fish and chips, ice-cream.

Dip a bucket to find treasure; maybe shrimps, anemones, limpets, snails and crabs. Perhaps hiding in the seaweed, a starfish, a magical creature, textured moon rock, always holding form and what a beautiful form it is. Gently return the sea creatures to their rock pool home to refresh when sea water comes in or travel on the next tide.

If you don’t find a crab in a pool, dangle a line from the harbour and see what bites. Take care! Their claws can nip.

Carefully swim, not too far now. Or snorkel. There’s a whole mysterious world just below the surface.

Ice-cream can be so nice and cool on a hot summer’s day, especially for cheeky herring gulls.

The ocean is hugely important to “Regulate rainfall and droughts, hold 97% of our planet’s water, and absorb CO2, help keep the carbon cycle in balance. From food to jobs, it’s a lifeline for billions of people, too” (World Economic Forum)

All is not well with our water systems. 75% of UK rivers pose a risk to human health. Only 14% of the UK’s rivers are in good ecological health, even then, they fail to meet chemical standards. Read more from The Rivers Trust or Surfers Against Sewerage. Significant polluters are often large organisations. We can care and be responsible for how we use our sewerage systems. Better to start somewhere, no?

De-stress. Walk along a river or a canal. Rest by a beautiful lake or pond.

Dragon flies, damsel flies, kingfishers are just a few streaks of bright colour you might see. According to scientific research being around water is fantastic for our emotional and psychological well being and an antidote to our often otherwise frenetic lives.

“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” Stewart Udall

Helen Grimbleby is a West Berks/ North Hants based artist who is inspired by the natural world’s changing seasons. After exploring outside, she enjoys writing, illustrating and painting larger landscapes at her home studio (@helengrimblebyart).

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Weeding out the good

Round & About

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Nature Sketchbook

Artist Helen Grimbleby’s latest instalment of her Nature Sketchbook looks at the importance of the humble weed

We are a nation of gardeners from tiny pots to larger expanses of land. When better to enjoy our garden spaces than in the summer?

What is gardening if not a collaboration with nature? For we can plan, dig, plant, weed, maintain outdoor spaces but it is nothing without the magic of nature turning water and sunshine into something else, something marvellous.

In our gardens, we have our ideas and nature has her own, bringing weeds into spaces where we don’t want them, interfering with our design and purpose.

Such differences of opinion exist in many open spaces where human life exists adjacent to nature such as in agriculture, hedgerows and roadside verges.

Collectively, we have a choice about how we interact with nature in all of these spaces. We have never had better access to information about nature to inform this choice and so let’s consider the possible advantages of the humble weed.

Bramble flowers attract butterflies and promise blackberries later, an important food source for birds.

Common knapweed is in flower in July. It is a thistle like plant which grows abundantly in our area. According to the University of Bristol it is one of the most important wildflowers for pollinating insects. I have seen it covered in bees and butterflies. It produces copious amounts of nectar.

Butterflies are not just pretty. According to the Butterfly Conservation charity, the presence of butterflies in an area indicates good health in an ecosystem. Where butterflies are present, there will be a wide range of other invertebrates. Invertebrates comprise over two-thirds of all species and provide a wide range of environmental benefits such as natural pest control.

Clover is found in grassy areas. Red and white clover are common and provide easy sources of nectar for bees. Butterflies are attracted to clover too and wood mice eat the leaves.

Overgrown weeds can be unsightly, unwanted and even dangerous say at road junctions. But our relationship with weeds is more complicated than. Its good to consider it from time to time and from place to place.

Helen Grimbleby is a West Berks/North Hants based artist who is inspired by the natural world’s changing seasons. After exploring outside, she enjoys writing, illustrating and painting larger landscapes at her home studio (@helengrimblebyart).

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Scents of summer

Round & About

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Nature Sketchbook

Artist Helen Grimbleby shares her love of nature in her monthly Nature Sketchbook

“Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full grow and luxuriance of its richness.” Charles Dickens

Summer is the season when our senses may easily delight in the natural world and the fairer weather means the opportunities to engage directly with nature are greater.

The wind of blustery seaside cliff tops is kinder and more inviting when it is warmer and drier. Its gentler brush on bare arms may even be welcome on hot summer days. Pink sea thrift flowers break up the wild expanses of rocky coastal scenes dominated at other times by blues, greens and greys. Such rocky coastal locations can also be home to puffin colonies who at this time of year are kept busy feeding their single chick broods.

Puffins can be found on the mainland in the very North of Scotland and also at Bempton in Yorkshire. Most are found on small islands such as Skomer (Wales) and the Farne Islands (Northumberland).

Badger cubs are actively playful now and I am so very hopeful to see some this year. I plan a few night-time hikes for this purpose. This brings excitement and a hint of trepidation in equal measure as the familiarity of darkness and shadows was left behind in the long-ago winter months.

After re-reading Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows in late spring, I was longing to see a badger in the wild, something I had never seen before. A short while later, I was slightly lost making my way back to a campsite in Wales after a friend’s birthday party. Having gone off track, driving up a high-hedged narrow single track, steep mountain road in the Black Mountains, I was focused on fretting about meeting a vehicle coming the other way. Then, turning a corner, I found myself face to face with a badger. Only momentarily perturbed by the road blockage cause by my car, it set off making its way through the embankment hedge, its slightly brownish, warm black coloured body perfectly camouflaged, wearing an intelligent expression set on a moon river face. What a joy!

I am assured of the scents of summer on my night-time walks with honeysuckle, wild rose, elderflower and pyramid orchids all in June bloom and my jaunts may be accompanied by an orchestra of grasshopper making their reedy music as I go. Will you walk with me grasshopper?

Helen Grimbleby is a West Berks/North Hants based artist who is inspired by the natural world’s changing seasons. After exploring outside, she enjoys writing, illustrating and painting larger landscapes at her home studio (@helengrimblebyart).

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The Nature Sketchbook: March

Round & About

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Nature Sketchbook

Artist Helen Grimbleby shares her love of the natural world through her work in a monthly series of observations

March many weathers is here. Although, the first month of meteorological spring, March is such an unresolved month, sometimes clinging on to freezing conditions and snow, unsure whether or when to allow the slow warm fingers of spring to get a hold.

It is nevertheless a joyful month with spring flowers ignoring the meteorological hesitancy, harnessing the sunshine to bring us verges of yellow primroses, cowslips, celandines, dandelions and narcissi/daffodils.

Where there are flowers, there are usually butterflies. In March we begin to see them emerge and arrive. Red admiral butterflies typically migrated from North Africa and were seen from spring onwards. In 2023, there was a 400% increase in their UK population. Experts suggest this may be due to the species now overwintering here rather than migrating due to warmer temperatures resulting from climate change.

Many of our early spring flowers are yellow as early pollinators, mainly insects, are attracted to the colour which appears as ultra-violet blue to them.

And it is attraction which brings us to the final association with March, and idiomatic mad hares. I have seen hares in West Berkshire but not engaged in the boxing behaviour which inspired the phrase. This is a tale of unrequited ardour with male buck hares pursuing female doe hares in the hope of mating and then, it seems, taking it too far. The unimpressed doe will demonstrate her lack of interest in dramatic fashion by turning on the buck and thumping him, initiating the boxing when fur may fly!

Helen Grimbleby is a West Berks/North Hants based artist who is inspired by the natural world’s changing seasons. After exploring outside, she enjoys writing and illustrating her Nature Sketchbook and painting larger landscapes at her home studio (@burbleartstudios).

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