Don't lose the plot - grow your own veggiesAnother Life: My father cut a trapdoor in the floorboards of our small terraced house in Brighton, to turn its earthen foundations…Sat May 27 2006 - 01:00
A creeping animus against ivy is taking holdAnother Life: The young ash tree outside the window is as perfect as they grow: a regular, multi-branched candelabra, its vertical…Sat May 20 2006 - 01:00
Hoping to create a buzz about the beesAnother Life: There were days this spring when the polytunnel became a fiery furnace, pitching me out to dry off in a chill …Sat May 06 2006 - 01:00
The illegal trade in layers of historyAnother Life: The heft of a slab of limestone is like that of no other rockSat Apr 29 2006 - 01:00
Taking up the cause of conserving Irish elmsAnother Life: The biggest trees of Brighton, my home town, were the majestic municipal elms, marching seawards along the lawns…Sat Apr 15 2006 - 01:00
Land matters and the future of farmingAnother Life: Waiting for the kettle to boil, I counted all the poles I can see from the kitchen window: 28 of them, electrical…Sat Apr 08 2006 - 01:00
Let ecology lead in landscape designAnother Life: A population getting on for eight million, some four million houses on the island and the same number of cars - …Sat Mar 25 2006 - 00:00
Sands of time are running out for shellfishAnother Life: You'd wonder why the piping oystercatchers bother with my bit of shore, where virtually the only shellfish on …Sat Mar 11 2006 - 00:00
Wisdom gleaned from a lifetime with ferretsAnother Life: Ginger Harris kept a ferret down his jumper but he wouldn't let me hold itSat Feb 25 2006 - 00:00
Will we feel the pinch of alien crabs?Another Life: A few weeks ago I joined the growing legion of readers who have been engaged (and also disquieted) by a new novel…Sat Feb 11 2006 - 00:00
Watching bottlenoses and dinky minkesAnother Life: The sad saga of the whale in the Thames drew me to BBC 24 just in time to hear the straying animal named as a …Sat Feb 04 2006 - 00:00
When a wake-up call bids goodnightAnother Life: Some of the earliest words I read were not exactly encouragingSat Jan 28 2006 - 00:00
The scary truth behind ghost fishingAnother Life: Among the torn furls of fishing net that arrive on our tideline some fragments are quite big - many metres across…Sat Jan 21 2006 - 00:00
Don't try to kill time or it will kill you firstAnother Life: It's a long, long time from May to December/ And the days grow short when you reach September/ When the autumn…Sat Jan 07 2006 - 00:00
An exotic slice of Christmas puddingAnother Life: Amid proper concerns about waste, consumerism and what to do with all the wrapping paper (we fold ours carefully…Sat Dec 17 2005 - 00:00
Flying visits from the jack snipesAnother Life: Before winter fought back from the limbo of global warming, the west coast had a run of exquisite days that gleamed…Sat Dec 10 2005 - 00:00
How merlin cast a magic spell on the rangerAnother Life: 'Far away to my right, a muffled and high-pitched chatter revealed a tiny grey flying machineSat Nov 26 2005 - 00:00
Trying to keep track of our winter visitorsAnother Life: Two late arrivals for our autumn assembly of whooper swans flew in low along the shore from the north.Sat Nov 12 2005 - 00:00
Eye on NatureI observed lots of long, white cobweb-like threads floating on an air stream and catching in trees and telephone wires.Sat Nov 05 2005 - 00:00
Slow clouds frame sunsets of the westAnother Life: We have front-row seats for the autumn's theatre festival of clouds.Sat Nov 05 2005 - 00:00
The end of the Arctic as we know it?Another Life: Three summer months in the High Arctic almost 20 years ago doesn't exactly rate for the Explorers Club, but my…Sat Oct 29 2005 - 01:00
The pure truth about our waterAnother Life: The water I pour from the rain-gauge bottle into a calibrated glass beaker these bracing autumn mornings has …Sat Oct 22 2005 - 01:00
Harvesting of kelp requires serious attentionAnother Life : A towering lorryload of wrack at the Leenane cross-roads the other morning was a reminder of one of Connemara…Sat Oct 15 2005 - 01:00
Biodiversity complexities still not understoodAnother Life: 'Biodiversity loss matters. It matters for ethical, emotional, environmental and economic reasonsSat Oct 08 2005 - 01:00
Eco-friendly burials: a means to a green endAnother Life: Bracken is curling on the ditch, autumn creeping through its fronds in a filigree elegance that attends the fern…Sat Oct 01 2005 - 01:00
Forgotten moths fly back into the limelightAnother Life: The CDs swinging in our apple trees offer a dozen mirrors to the sunSat Sept 17 2005 - 01:00
Singing in a burst of seraphic melodyAnother Life: For a heartfelt response to nature, there was nothing to beat a Victorian in full rhapsodic flow.Sat Sept 10 2005 - 01:00
Halting the march of the grey squirrelAnother Life: When foresters talk of grey squirrels as "tree rats", biology supports their bile: squirrels are rodents with…Sat Sept 03 2005 - 01:00
In the netherworld of nature's parasitesAnother Life: 'Tiny wasps are known," wrote Edward O Wilson in The Diversity of Life , "whose larvae parasitise the larvae of…Sat Aug 27 2005 - 01:00
Caring about our coastAnother Life : It is among Ireland's south-westerly islands that one tunes in best to the pulse of the ocean: among the Blaskets…Sat Aug 20 2005 - 01:00
Drifting balloons can mean death for turtlesAnother Life: On the shore below Croagh Patrick, what's left of a long spit of dunes curves out towards the drowned drumlin …Sat Jul 30 2005 - 01:00
The compelling beauty of sea anemonesAnother Life: The smell of low tide, as Rachel Carson described it once, is "compounded of the faint, pervasive smell of worms…Sat Jul 23 2005 - 01:00
The call of the skylark, cuckoo and corncrakeAnother Life: It took well over a decade for swallows to find the ledges at the back of our open woodshed: perhaps they were…Sat Jul 16 2005 - 01:00
The hunt for weapons of midge destructionAnother Life: Sparrows hover like hummingbirds to peck midges from the windows, their tappings gentle and preciseSat Jun 25 2005 - 01:00
Sycamore deserves a place in the countrysideAnother Life: The growth of young trees can astonish you from one year to the next, even when you've reared them from seedlings…Sat Jun 11 2005 - 01:00
Mysterious comings and goings of wild orchidsAnother Life: They've widened the bend above the post office, where I used to push my bike up the hill from the library busSat Jun 04 2005 - 01:00
Surroundings and soundingsEnvironment: Kathleen Jamie started travelling early, setting off at 19 with a poetry-writing award to the Near East and Himalayas…Sat Jun 04 2005 - 01:00
Too much temptation for sun-loving insectsAnother Life: On my knees in the polytunnel the other afternoon, I was counting my considerable blessingsSat May 14 2005 - 01:00
A feeling for poetry in the glory of thingsAnother Life: Along the hillsides, rocks are giving way - boulders heaved aside, bedrock carved out with jack-hammers to create…Sat May 07 2005 - 01:00
The curse of furze, or the glory of gorse?Another Life: It's always a great spring for whins (or furze, or gorse, depending on your birthplace)Sat Apr 30 2005 - 01:00
Close encounters of the grisly kindAnotherLife: On a glorious early morning a few winters back, swooping down the mountain road to Maam Cross, we came up with …Sat Apr 16 2005 - 01:00
Blue tit songbird a marvel in miniatureAnother Life: The nest-box was more for our benefit than the tits': there's no shortage of natural holes in our ancient hawthorns…Sat Apr 09 2005 - 01:00
Lollo rosso and other blushing headsAnother Life: The sudden rush into spring has the seakale pushing up succulent shoots in the garden (where I blanch them under…Sat Apr 02 2005 - 01:00
Mountain vistas brings transcendental calmAnother Life: 'It's quite possible that things could soon get a whole lot better for walking in this country," says the spring…Sat Mar 26 2005 - 00:00
Bringing partridges back from the brinkAnother Life: The scamper of a gaudy cock pheasant from ditch to ditch in front of the car the other morning gave its usual …Sat Mar 12 2005 - 00:00
Testing times for the bottom-feedersAnother Life: A grey, high-pressure day, the air charged with moisture on the edge of drizzle, the sea held down by a thousand…Sat Mar 05 2005 - 00:00
Curbing nitrates near trout-lakes and riversAnotherLife: In harsher winters it was the slow seep of green into the hollows of the hillside's grassed-over potato ridges …Sat Feb 19 2005 - 00:00
