Let the harvest season begin! Late summer, with its new colour and transition into autumn, is a celebration of the abundant natural world around us. It’s time to prepare for a feast as the garden and the countryside are now at their zenith, vegetables are growing over the borders and berries are hanging ripe from the branches.
As the sun dips lower in the horizon, the light and cooler winds set off the starting signal for the great migration of birds. Swallows will be busy preparing for their journey to Africa, while waders, warblers and flycatchers will make an appearance around the coasts to feed themselves fat before their big journey south. Small redstarts are also preparing for their flight to West Africa, where homely branches are waiting for them to rest on arrival. All birds have dual citizenship. And they are wise going south since August can be the wettest month in parts of Britain.
Traditional weather folklore tells us this: if you count the number of fogs you see in August, that determines how many days of snow there will be in winter. A dry first week in August means the winter may be harsh and cold.
This season, the Autumn Equinox is on 22 September, a day celebrating the perfect balance of light and dark. The word equinox comes from the Latin aequinoctium meaning “the time of equal days and nights”, from equi– meaning “equal,” and nocti– meaning “night”.
Late summer is a celebration of the abundant natural world around us
Underneath the soil, fungal networks will be at work and their fruiting bodies – the mushrooms – provide an essential food source for much life in the woodlands. Don’t cut back your ivy, since its small, yellow, late flowering makes it a banquet of nourishment for honeybees, bumblebees, wasps and nine butterfly species, who all depend on it as a food source to see them through the tricky winter hibernation period.
September’s full moon is a super moon, which means it can appear 30 per cent larger. So in the spirit of harvest, let’s fill our baskets with abundance while it lasts, to share among friends and be merry. It’s a much needed and necessary activity before the winter months ahead. Wishing you a happy harvest!
Positive Ecological Restoration Stories
Blue whales return to Antarctic waters
Ten of thousands of blue whales once swam in the Southern Ocean, but by the late 1960s whalers had hunted these magnificent mammals to near extinction. Now polar biologist Jennifer Jackson is cautiously optimistic about their return. A research trip she organised spotted 58 blue whales in only 23 days and these sightings “suggest that there is now starting to be a really good recovery in the South Atlantic”, she said, adding: “to be able to feed blue whales in that number suggests that there is good food and a lot of it. Blue whales have got to go to places with big swarms of krill, so I think that’s a really positive thing.”
Britain’s rainforest restoration
It often comes as a surprise to hear that Britain has temperate rainforests. There used to be great swathes of them hundreds of years ago and today small remnants remain and are scattered along the Atlantic coast. A proactive project is now underway to increase the size of this most ancient part of our heritage. The British Wildlife Trusts have embarked on a 100-year initiative with the main goal to protect and enlarge Britain’s temperate rainforests. This is thanks to support from the insurance firm Aviva who donated £38m. If you work with big business, please consider following suit as the Government’s arm is short in supporting these ideas and new visionary projects. Rainforests have a large ground biomass which drives towards positive carbon sinks, and they can be a bastion to many species. Such forests inspire awe and restoring them is a solution we should all get behind. “These woods are magical and much loved by those who visit and live near them, we’re looking forward to working with communities to bring back rainforests along the Atlantic coast,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts.
Rewilding a Wiltshire gem
Lower Pertwood farm happily embraced organic growing, but as the farm’s profits plummeted due to seasonal flooding and drought, the owners started farming in the mosaic of nature instead. The 2,800-acre arable farm is now transforming itself into the biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England. They are aiming to restore species such as cuckoos, grasshopper warblers and turtle doves. The project is led by the naturalist Benedict Macdonald. “It’s enormously exciting,” he said. “Salisbury Plain on the horizon is like a giant, free seedbank of species, some of which – such as the reintroduced great bustard – might naturally explore Pertwood as it begins to recover.”
Brewing solutions
Breweries producing beer may have a new function: to combat water pollution. Recent research reveals that common recycled beer yeast can remove hazardous lead from water, providing an effective, sustainable and cost-effective solution. Researchers from MIT have found that yeast has the rare ability to clean toxic water by absorbing heavy metal ions such as lead. The researchers built a biofilter with yeast granules and the filter successfully took away lead from the water in twelve days. Given the abundance of yeast and the low cost of application, this innovation is said to become the new affordable water treatment solution. Cheers to that!
Sky Events
The Perseids Meteor Shower on 12 and 13 August will produce up to 60 meteors per hour. The full moon, known as a Sturgeon moon, will be on 19 August, which is also a seasonal Blue Moon. The best time to view Mercury is 5 September, which will be low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. September’s full moon is on 18 September, known by Native American tribes as the Corn Moon and elsewhere as the Harvest Moon, the Wine Moon or the Song Moon. On the same day, we shall also have a partial lunar eclipse, visible throughout most of North America, Mexico, Central America, South America, the Atlantic Ocean, and most of Europe and Africa. September Equinox occurs at 12:39 UTC.
August and September Tides
Spring
5–7 and 20–22 August
4–6 and 19–21 September
Andreas Kornevall is a Swedish storyteller, author and ecologist. He is the Director of Operations for the Earth Restoration Service Charity based in the UK
