Regular readers will remember I mentioned my wife passed away recently. I don’t intend to go on about it in my blogs but it is affecting my days spent at the woods and that might reflect in the tone of the posts or lack of content occasionally. I would just say that unless you have experienced the loss of a long term partner personally, then you won’t understand how deep grief can be and the huge mix of emotions you will experience. Some you cannot even put a name to. It’s not the same as losing a parent or close friend, it’s way bigger than that. Hence the title of this. As you know I consider visits to the woods as a huge boost to my mental health but yesterdays visit barely scratched the surface in alleviating the sadness and loneliness that I am experiencing.

I only had one job in mind which was to continue stripping the bark off the larch logs. The rest of the day I would spend doing whatever felt right, walking around observing and taking photos. Without the work it would have been hard to fill my time without getting hugely morose. There’s also something very therapeutic and satisfying about doing some simple but energetic task. By the end of the day I had stripped the rest of the logs and stacked them ready for use for building various structures, mainly a log store.

This next photo is a wild raspberry leaf covered in greenfly. The second photo is the juvenile ladybird beetle which feeds on them. It was just a few feet away from them but on a nettle which had very few. It occurred to me how random and disconnected life can sometimes be. If the beetle had enough awareness and intelligence to know they were there it would have meals for life. The greenfly are just as unaware of the danger lurking so close that could gobble them up.

I had a walk round and took some photos. This nest box has started to rot and the woodpeckers have tried to get into it. I think a new one is in order for next year.

As I don’t have much else to say, I’ll just leave you with a few more photos