Good morning; I hope this finds you safe and well. I am back from my Easter trip with friends to Budapest, so I will tell you more about it today. I lived in Budapest for eleven years as a student maturing into my first few jobs in tech. I studied and experienced the first social media channels there. It was also in Hungary, a very innovative and tech-friendly country, that I fell in love with what today we call digital wellbeing.
Good morning; I hope this finds you well. It’s raining heavily in Bristol, so I am a bit worried about the peas we took out to the allotment this week. Growing plants from the seed is my learning challenge this week, and I am noticing how precious those little plants have become. I remember how they emerged from the soil within days, demanding a move from the propagator to a larger pot, and now, three weeks later, they were too tall to stay with us at home. We prepared a more shaded side of our allotment shed with new compost and netting for them to climb on, so I hope they have been okay with this rain since yesterday. Of course, I will check on them today, but it’s interesting to notice how attached I have become to those babies.
Good morning! It’s a gloomy, windy Saturday here in Bristol, so I hope you are warm and possibly enjoying more sun than we do.
After a day of work in the allotment, I am back home watching the rain… on the one hand, I would like to be out there, digging away in the sun. On the other hand, I am happy that the bushes I moved to the allotment have a lot of rain to establish their roots without interruption. March can feel very confusing, so I am trying to be patient. When the sun comes out, I take my lunch to the garden. When the rain returns, I wrap up under my blankets or garden indoors instead.
Good Morning! It feels like it’s been a while. However, I was only away for two weeks. Last week, I was busy writing an extensive article on opportunities and challenges of cyberpsychology for social change, hence why I was quiet here. I am so attuned to Nature that it feels like I was away for two seasons. You see, we had our “day of snow” here in Bristol, so it feels like a lot happened in Nature in the last fourteen days.
Hello, I hope your Sunday is soft today. Mine is dedicated to reconnecting with my tribes and re-potting the first small plants I grew from seeds. So it feels very warm and nurturing. Yes, we are still experiencing low temperatures in the UK and expect below zero next week. I organised my books and cupboards yesterday, so I have a few more scarves out!
This weekend feels hectic to me. I feel that I have to force myself to sit down to blog, and now it’s good to be here. Don’t get me wrong; it was a magical week. However, I feel too many lines of thought colliding, too many ideas and too many parallel processes happening in my life. Some were very good, others not so much, especially the situation in Eastern Europe (a year on since the major Russian offensive in Ukraine) and in the UK (issues with access to some fresh food resulting in food rationing) at the moment. I remain hopeful, though, because I am surrounded by people who work towards a better world, collaborate and support each other. It’s good to have a supportive tribe and move forward together.
This week flew by, and so did the weekend. Small flowers still come up and announce the spring, and I cannot get enough of them. I spent this week planning 2023 in our garden and on the allotment plot, possibly inspired by last weekend’s Bristol Seed Swap. I arrived at the event with a bag full of allotment seeds to share with other Bristolians. I listened to a talk about biopiracy (I had no idea!…) and came away with a renewed sense of Nature activism, as well as pockets full of free seeds.
I was away from this Substack space for a few weeks, resting and travelling. I visited friends in Oxfordshire one weekend and went to Paris last weekend. Hence my silence. It is essential for me to pause and stay quiet sometimes. Silence helps me think. Taking time off the usual daily and weekly routine and changing my location helps me gain a little bit of perspective on my life and myself, too.
The weather is pretty dramatic across the continent. I am spending my week observing the movement of spring flowers, waking up, and preparing to enjoy longer days. Bluebells sprouted, and I already saw their leaves out! Daffodils are so tall we can already look for forming bulbs, and it’s still January. Nature feels confused at the moment, but I do not blame her. We are feeling the result of what we are doing to her globally. We haven’t been kind.
It’s raining in the UK. It rains all the time. We managed to get to the allotment once to sort out the paths (winter and spring lend themselves to the heavier jobs on the plot), but sunny days are ever so rare at the moment. The Birthday woodland walk we planned started in heavy rain and mud – it was a miracle that the weather cleared out by the time we had tea, and still, it was the wind that blew the candle on the cute little cake my friend brought for me.