Inspired by Nature is a themed Croak to entertain you with some of my own and my favourite famous poems written about nature and the outdoors. I hope it will stimulate you to get creative with words and write something yourself. If you do and would like to share them with us, please post them on our facebook page.
Becca, Conservation Youth Worker: Green Pathways Project
Nonsense Poems
You’d think these would be easy, but it is more difficult than you might imagine to write utter nonsense.
You all know a nonsense poem; Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy Cat or even the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle. These are rhyming verse written for children which often use made-up words or are utterly meaningless. It’s a good way to have fun with language that even young children can take part in.
If you have never read Dr Seuss, then please do, no matter how old you are. He is the master of nonsense. It’s not technically nonsense, but his book The Lorax is a brilliant fable on the impact of greed and overexploitation on the environment. I love it.
Write a piece of nonsense and post it on our facebook page!
My Desk: Nonsense but to me
“Lets twist!” said the cheese with a sparkly sneeze,
To the naked clay froad in the road.
“Stop” stared the hawk whilst the starling went “squawk”
And the card underneath was bowed
By a box of hoppers on top of the loppers,
Near to the soft roll of bed,
The abandoned chair and the children of Claire
And the handsome lieutenant I’d wed.
Wednesday involved spray-painting practice for a mural at Olive Branch then strawberry picking with another boy at the Green Backyard.
Thursday, out on the butterfly survey again. This time the weather was really good so we saw literately hundreds of butterflies! Then we were out for a snake hunt again and I finally saw my first adder, at last! And there were two of them, both hiding under the same mat, what a cool thing to see.
The methods of the study were as follows: between May and January of the following year, tadpole development at the field site was monitored by randomly collecting tadpoles and taking them back to the laboratory to be measured and their stage of development was noted. If an individual had not started metamorphosis by November it was considered to be over-wintering as a larva. Water temperature was continuously logged for the duration of the study. This data was used to calculate the mean fortnightly temperature. For the laboratory study, the tanks where kept at mean fortnightly temperatures and they had either a high or low food availability scenario. The tadpole’s development and condition were also recorded.
The study confirmed that tadpoles do over-winter at the study site. At the site, shortly after hatching the larvae began to form two distinct development groups. One group consisted of waves of individuals that grew on and then metamorphosed. The second, smaller, group continued to grow but did not metamorphose and this decision to over-winter as tadpoles was carried out very early in their development.
So councils usually encourage people to compost at home where they can, or take it to community recycling and composting schemes. Having a 
Fortunately, there are several areas where we can cut back to reduce the amount of material that ends up in the green bin. It’s understandable to want to tidy up grass cuttings after we’ve mown the lawn, but leaving them can not only save on our green waste but also provide nutrients for your lawn. The clippings will naturally begin to be absorbed after two days or so and the added nutrients will encourage thicker and healthier growth. Alternatively, you could consider a slower growing turf, allowing some areas of grass to grow longer to provide safer areas for wildlife to move through or even getting rid of your lawn completely and converting it to a wild flower meadow which will attract bees and encourage biodiversity.