It’s relatively well known that before the arrival of humans, aproximately 9000 years ago Ireland was covered in mixed, broadleaf woodland. A huge amount of deforestation happened in the first few millennium as the human population became settled and these first Irish are often both credited and blamed for how the Irish landscape looks today,
When I was 12, nearly 13, I had a science project due; one of my first of secondary school. I loved forests so I decided to look at the effects of deforestation which led me to studies of Greenhouse Gases. It was 2004 and while people knew about “global warming”, it was not on the
I’m sitting in my garden on a sunny day last summer, soaking in some much needed vitamin D and photographing bumblebees in a lavender bush. It’s not a bad way to relax. This is one of the photographs that I took. It ended up being one of the most popular I ever posted on Tumblr
Urban gardens have had a new resurgence in fashion, adding to the list the many things that have become “millennial aesthetics” that are actually age-old reactions of populations to economic downturn and social change. In particular community gardens in Dublin have made a major comeback and the demand for allotments is higher than ever. The
Some of you may have gotten the impression that I have some opinions about bee conservation. So now I’m putting my money where my mouth is and getting a tattoo of Ireland’s most endangered bumblebee to raise funds for the Irish Wildlife Trust’s ‘People for Bees’ talks. But why the Great Yellow Bumblebee? While honeybees
The Irish Wildlife Trust runs lectures and workshops in local libraries and community centres around Ireland, teaching people about bees and what they can do to help them in their areas and in their own gardens. Tidy Towns committees have been vital in providing spaces for wildflower planting. I want to fund these talks and
‘Save the Bees’ – an ideal Instagram caption for wildflowers you’ve spotted by the side of the road. The phrase has taken on meme-like status over the last few years, both in the idealistic aesthetic sense and in more absurdist millennial humour. Surely everyone has had the joy of this GIF in their lives NY
The first thing you need to know about my ‘no single-use plastic’ January is that 100% I still used single-use plastics. I did not succeed in avoiding them entirely because there are just so many insidious sources of plastic in everyday life. I would have had to adopt #StopthePlasticTide as a full time job to
When I decided to stop using single use plastics this month I did not anticipate that brushing my teeth would be one of the most complicated parts of that challenge. Dentists tell us to change over toothbrushes every 3 months, that’s four a year for your life. Even assuming people don’t follow that advice strictly
There has been some controversy in my life recently from a source I would never have expected. Teabags. Those who know me know that the volume of tea I can drink on a given day in likely outside of safe levels but at least I always knew that my compost bin was healthy. Or not,
