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A happy accident
Chinese lanterns for Christmas
 • Phil Gates
The botanical carousel of the seasons slows in winter, but never quite grinds to a halt.
From this morning’s walk around Wolsingham in Weardale, just a couple of days before the winter solstice, the promise of spring, Pristine new lesser…
 • Phil Gates
A wandering wasp, a bird that can silence church bells, winter fragrance and a feline gate guardian
One December day, several years ago, I found a queen wasp hibernating in a finger of my gardening gloves, a memorably painful encounter.
 • Phil Gates
Travellers' joy on the last bus home
Feathery clouds of Clematis vitalba seeds, entangled in the briars and hazels in the corner of the field, shine in winter sunshine.
 • Phil Gates
A tree with a tutu, a romantic parasite, hedgerow bling and a peel of moss bells
We had one exceptionally warm, sunny day in late November, warm enough to leave the conservatory door open until dusk and for this tiny twenty-plume…
 • Phil Gates
Charcoal, a sermon in stone and the conception of a new fern.
This alder Alnus glutinosa at Durham Wildlife Trust’s Low Barns nature reserve was recently felled and sawn into logs.
 • Phil Gates
Armchair ornithology, scratch-and-sniff botany, fern siege catapults and survival on a diet of alder seeds
Three o’clock on a freezing November afternoon.
 • Phil Gates
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