Apres moi le deluge

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring
 

 from 'Black Spring' by Boris Pasternak (translated by Alex Miller)

In February I trudged along the banks of the Ouse.  I had set out in the aftermath of the floods and though the water level had fallen in previous weeks, there were still signs in town and country of its devastation. Empty houses and ruined businesses haunted York city, but I wanted to see what was happening downriver.

The mud clung to my boots as I followed the slippery path downstream. I placed my feet on tufts of grass, hoping that their roots would give the ground extra purchase and I wouldn't be introducing my backside to the sodden earth. Plant roots don't just help maintain the integrity of the soil, they can also increase the amount of water it can hold and help the water evaporate through transpiration. More trees in the upland would have helped to protect the landscape surrounding me from ruin.

My trail snaked about waterlogged bushes and trees that seemed to have taken strange forms. The great torrent had deposited driftwood and mud high in their boughs. Silt and sticks caked together on the bare wooden scaffolds, leaving each tree's damaged arms carrying a tangle of new, deadwood branches.

Ahead of me, the land opened up and as I left the path, I stared at a bizarre scene on the boggy ground. As the water receded, the ice covering it had cracked and fallen on the tufts of grass below, scattering large sheets of ice. It was almost as if the plants had sprung up to break a giant sheet of plate glass.

Eventually the alien world ahead of me became too difficult to navigate and I had to turn back, undoing the steps I'd already taken. Today, as the government broadcasts televised flood-warnings and advice, I look back on that February and wonder if they'll be willing to backtrack too. Dredging, uphill farming and river straightening have made flooding more likely and more dangerous. We need to think seriously about land-use if we're going to stop this happening again.

UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

This is Barbara McClintock, a botanist. In her work on maize she made fundamental contributions to our understanding of genetics, which have applications far wider than just plant science.

Barabara McClintock. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archive

 She was the first person to describe a phenomenon called 'chromosome crossover'. This is a mechanism in which bits of parent chromosomes are swapped during sexual reproduction, allowing inheritance of new combinations of alleles (versions of genes). This discovery was key to understanding how different traits are inherited between generations and is thought to be crucial to the success of sexually reproductive organisms.

She was the first person to describe transposons or 'jumping genes'. These are elements of DNA that can move within the genome, causing mutations. This work also showed that genes could actually be switched on or off, a fundamental concept to understanding how organisms actually work.

She won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for her work on transposons, the only time it's been awarded to a lone woman. Both of these discoveries occur in a wide range of organisms, from mosses to humans, and they have greatly increased our knowledge of the natural world.

Her mother tried to prevent her going to University fearing it would make her 'unmarriageable'. Fortunately her father disagreed, but antiquated ideas about women's role in society almost prevented one histories greatest geneticists in reaching her potential. Things have improved but I still see sexism in science and relatively few women make it to top academic posts. We as a society need to change the way that science works, to allow equal access and opportunity within the field.

The land that came in from the cold

Winter is my favourite season.

As the days get shorter and the temperature drops, nature becomes more subtle. But as the cold air prickles your skin and makes your eyes water, the outside world also seems more immediate.

Trees shed their leaves so we can see their elegant structures, pocked with numerous buds and scars. Buds protect fragile tissues, full of the promise of spring growth whilst the scars are remnants of previous year's buds, memories of the past. I still remember receiving my first pair of glasses and staring amazed at the branching leafless arms above. For the first time in years I saw their delicacy and complexity, silhouetted clearly against the skies. This rediscovery was like opening a cupboard to find a cherished but forgotten treasure.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

This years unseasonable warmth has brought none of the frosts that make some of nature's delicate structures more obvious and beautiful. There are no frozen spider webs, in their filigree beauty. Their fine strands and simple structure offer surprising strength, holding many times their own weight in ice. 

This year snow has not covered the world in a frozen blanket, obscuring what grows below and revealing what moves above. Instead, York has been surrounded by a patchwork of flooded fields, so a fortnight ago, I headed north to see snow.

As I reached Durham, I realised that I was too late, the early morning signs of the wild were covered by the coarse boot marks of other explorers, or otherwise lost to a slight thaw. There was no sense of discovery, no delicate blackbird footprints, no chance to guess at the marks of mammals. Instead there was just a shabby, half-thawed white and brown, an opportunity missed.

Image courtesy of NASA

Yesterday, as I travelled south for Christmas, I was  astounded to see daffodils flowering and lawns that have carried on growing, long past when they should have stopped. Is this the same country where recently an ice covered satellite photo etched itself on the public conciousness? The climate is making weather less predictable. Of course neither the warm flooded Decembers, nor the frozen isles are normal, so perhaps we will have to find a new normal in the changes. 

Wareham woods

As I stride across managed woodland, the low sun still casts long cold shadows, drawing a pencilstroke landscape, beneath a pastel sky. I remember that January is usually colder than December, so perhaps there is still time for change and the winter I love. There is still time for cold.

Tilia The Dancing Lady

Oh Tilia, oh Tilia, say, have you met Tilia?
Tilia The Dancing Lady

It was a late summer barbecue, a few days after I'd moved into my new Cambridge flat. My fellow residents and I sat in a circle under the shade of the horse chestnuts and sycamores, that tower over our communal gardens. Though the ground was dry, we sat on a mismatched collection of chairs, brought out from the surrounding flats.

We partook of that stuttered dialogue that occurs between the unfamiliar, when people dip their toes into conversation tentatively, withdrawing if it becomes too uncomfortable. The discussion flitted between those topics to which conversations default in the home counties.

'Do you think the sunshine will last?'

'Yes, I think it'll hold for a while, but that cloud over there does look worrying.'

Gazes returned from the heavens to match those of their companions, but they soon darted down towards the ground, nervous of the prospect of sharing eye contact with the unfamiliar. It was then I noticed that beneath my feet, the lawn was covered with brown, desiccated leaves and the earth itself seemed bereft of almost all moisture.

The pull through a plant of water is subtle, yet astonishingly powerful; I remember David Attenborough remarking that evaporation can pull nearly half a tonne of water through a sycamore, every hour.

So it didn't surprise me that my feet rested on dry ground, but what did surprise me was the lime seed between my feet. Even though the alkaline soil leaves Cambridge liberally peppered with limes, the tree is absent from the streets surrounding my flat.

Tilia Cordata fruits, image from Wikimedia commons

The fruits of the lime tree hang down from a slender and curved bract, that causes the fruit to flick, spin and catch the wind as it falls. It's a haphazard dance that is intended to carry the seed far from it's parent. That I have yet to find the parent tree demonstrates that the little linden can glide far across the dancefloor, and our lady Tilia's pirouettes leave me just as dazzled as any ballerina's.